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4. Pedagogical Issues in Swedish Deaf Education
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4 Pedagogical Issues in Swedish Deaf Education Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta and Lars-Åke Domfors This chapter brings together two aspects of the Swedish Deaf community. First, we explore how different historical discourses have shaped present ideologies in Swedish Deaf education, including teacher education. Second, we look at what role Swedish bilingual ideology has played in supporting the development of contradictory meanings of Deafness in Sweden, especially in the aftermath of the national curriculum for compulsory schools, which was put into effect in the early 1980s (Lgr 80 1980).1 The Swedish situation is unique in the sense that a relatively uniform bilingual educational system is made available to all Deaf children in the country. PROJECT BACKGROUNDS The first project that we discuss in this chapter reflects the second author’s recently concluded doctoral research (Domfors 2000a). This research focuses (a) on a historical analysis of the education of teachers of the Deaf (ToDs) from the inception of this education in 1874 and (b) on a study of present-day understandings of ToD competencies and professionalism at the high school level. The historical analysis included the study of archival documents like syllabi, examination assignments , annual lecturing journals, bills, biographies, and the personal accounts and letters of teachers and school principals. The second part of the study was based on an analysis of classroom observations and in-depth interviews of ToDs at the national high schools of the Deaf and hard of hearing (henceforth called RGD/RGH schools) during the mid-1990s.2 Two of the three RGD schools have found that significant numbers of their Deaf students have serious difficulties with reading and writing.3 In one of these schools, almost two-thirds of Deaf and hard of hearing students were seen as having reading and writing difficulties.4 The first author of this chapter has studied during two school years the dynamics of classroom interaction at four different high school programs at RGD in what is known as the RGD project: the 67 68 Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta and Lars-Åke Domfors Vehicle Engineering, the Construction, the Bakery (Food), and the Media programs (see Bagga-Gupta 2000, 2001b, 2001c, 2002a).5 The second project discussed in this chapter, which was led by Bagga-Gupta, focuses on language spheres in educational settings. ToDs from each of the six schools for the Deaf (the five regional schools in Örebro, Vänersborg, Stockholm, Lund, and Härnösand as well as the local school in Gothenburg) and three schools for the hard of hearing (local schools in Hässleholm, Piteå, and Stockholm) participated in this writing and reading project (SOL project). And finally, Bagga-Gupta, together with members of KKOM-DS (Communication , Culture, and Diversity-Deaf Studies) research group, conducted ethnographically oriented research (Special Schools or SS project), which studied the everyday communication, learning, and achievement at the five state regional special schools for Deaf and hard of hearing students (Bagga-Gupta 2002b). 1981 AND THE BEGINNING OF A TRANSITION Compulsory schooling for Deaf children in Sweden has been enforced since 1889. . . . A great deal has happened since then both in terms of the States and the general society’s attitudes towards handicapped children and within the field of special education and needs-related teaching. . . . [These] schools have, through different decisions and changes in the law, adapted to the needs which society today considers appropriate for teaching of children who because of . . . deafness [and] hearing impairment . . . or other reasons cannot attend [normal] compulsory schools.6 (National Agency for Education 1997, 3, 62) In 1981, Sweden became the first country in the world to officially recognize a sign language, teckenspråk (Swedish Sign Language, or SSL), as the “first language ” of its Deaf citizens, including immigrant deaf students. This parliamentary decision was a response to a number of different voices present in Sweden in the 1970s. During the 1960s, minority and immigrant students could get instruction about and in their home languages for the first time. The “home language reform” (hemspråksreform) went into effect on July 1, 1977. This legislation required school districts to organize home-language teaching and study supervision for students in their home languages (Hyltenstam and Tuomela 1996). Research and the Swedish Deaf and parental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were instrumental in getting SSL accepted as an official language. Following the lead of William Stokoe’s research on American Sign Language linguistics starting in 1957 (Baker and Battison 1980), Brita Bergman and Inger...