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63 4 Diversity and Deaf Identity: Implications for Personal Epistemologies in Deaf Education Ila Parasnis In this chapter, the term diversity refers to sociocultural differences among people. The terms race/ethnicity and racial/ethnic refer to diversity related to race and ethnicity ; the slash does not make the terms race and ethnicity interchangeable but is used for the sake of brevity. The term deaf people refers to people with significant hearing loss and includes those who are American Sign Language (ASL) signers, users of other sign languages and modalities, hard of hearing people, and those with cochlear implants or hearing aids. The term deaf education refers to the education of deaf and hard of hearing students, including those who are culturally Deaf (e.g., Padden & Humphries, 1988) and those who view their experience of being hard of hearing as part of their self-identities (e.g., Brueggemann, 1999). The term Deaf community refers to a sociocultural group of deaf and hard of hearing people who value the use of a sign language and accept their deafness as a positive difference and not a disability. Deaf people who accept this community affiliation generally regard themselves as having a Deaf identity. More in-depth discussion of the concepts of Deaf community and Deaf identity will follow later. My perspective in this discussion is shaped by my training as a cognitive psychologist specializing in visual perception, my extensive experience as a researcher in deaf education who uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to study visual cognition and diversity in deaf education (e.g., Parasnis, 1998; 2004; Parasnis, Samar, & Fischer, 2005), and the personal epistemological beliefs I have developed as a hearing, multilingual , Indian American woman, which include recognition of individual differences and sociocultural and linguistic differences among learners as fundamental steps for creating an effective teaching–learning environment. I thank Vincent J. Samar, Dominique LePoutre, Anjali Parasnis-Samar, and Francois Grosjean for their feedback on the earlier version of this manuscript. 64 Ila Parasnis PERSONAL EPISTEMOLOGIES AND DEAF EDUCATION In the traditional view of epistemology, knowledge and justified beliefs are essentially linked to objective truth as the goal of our cognitive practices, and the existence of objective norms of rationality is presupposed (Steup, 2010). However, many scholars in sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, and literary theory have advocated the constructivist view that knowledge and justified beliefs are socially constructed and that there is no unified theory of knowledge or set of objective methods for creating knowledge. Put simply, there is growing recognition that who studies what, why, when, and how significantly influences how knowledge is constructed and interpreted . In the field of general education scholars who accept the constructivist view have vigorously discussed the implied multiplicity of epistemological beliefs among individuals and how that may influence the teaching–learning process (see Hofer, 2001; Hofer & Pintrich, 1997, 2002; Pallas, 2001; Schraw, 2001; Schraw & Olafson, 2002; Schraw & Sinatra, 2004). In deaf education in particular, however, it is rare to see an explicit discussion of multiple epistemologies. Yet, it is obvious that professionals from different disciplines such as education, psychology, sociology, linguistics , speech, and audiology have relied on different domain-specific epistemologies in addition to their own personal epistemologies to create and interpret the current common knowledge about deafness and Deaf people. The present volume and the special issue of the American Annals of the Deaf edited by Paul (2010) are notable early initiatives to examine the assumptions underlying this knowledge and the future role of epistemological diversity in deaf education. Historically, theory and practice in the field of deaf education has been driven by the traditional epistemological belief that deafness is a physical disability, a belief seen as value-neutral and objective (Paul & Moores, 2010). More recently, nontraditional epistemological beliefs, centered on the sociocultural model of deafness and informed by the subjective experiences and perspectives of deaf people as members of a linguistic minority culture (e.g., Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996; Padden & Humphries, 1988; Parasnis, 1996), have been gaining acceptance from professionals in deaf education. Within published writings on the sociocultural model of deafness, the concept of diversity is often used to refer to the experience of deaf people as a cultural minority group embedded in a larger hearing society. This conceptualization of the Deaf community as a minority community has opened the way for educators to legitimately propose new, socioculturally informed perspectives on theory and practice within deaf education. Ironically, however, this description of diversity based on the experiences of white American Deaf ASL users has...

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