Bilingual Education: Teacher’s Opinions of Signs

In order to find what teachers think is an appropriate means of communication with their deaf pupils, I assumed a bilingual perspective and designed a questionnaire to assess their opinions of two kinds of signing, American Sign Language and Signed English. Eighty-five teachers responded and their overall opinion was that: deaf children should begin signing at as early an age as possible, should use Signed English as their base language, should eventually be bilingual in Signed English and American Sign Language; and likewise that their teachers should be bilingual. There was also an attitude overall in favor of the implementation of bilingual education for deaf children in total communication programs.