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Good Practice in Deaf Education
- Gallaudet University Press
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Good Practice in Deaf Education SUSAN GREGORY, ELIZABETH ANDREWS, WENDY MCCRACKEN, STEVE POWERS, AND LINDA WATSON In 1999, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) in Britain commissioned and funded a “Review of Good Practice in Deaf Education.” The review provides a survey of reported good practice in educating deaf children based on more than 600 questionnaire responses and fieldwork in 15 schools, colleges, and advisory services for deaf pupils. These organizations were nominated by respondents as places where good practice could be observed. The present authors were among the members of the team who undertook the research and wrote it up for publication (Gregory et al., 2001; Powers et al., 1999). Problems in Defining Good Practice: Whose Definition? The first question to arise in research such as this concerns “whose voice” should be heard when “good practice” is defined. Parents, professionals, consumers, and others are all important, but how can their different perspectives be presented equitably? Common sense would suggest that a balance or combination of these perspectives should be built into any definition of “good practice”—but it is not easy to achieve a balanced statement that satisfies all interest groups. This difficulty is particularly true in discussions of the education of deaf students because of the additional factor of the controversial nature of methodological issues concerning language and communication. In this area of work, it should never be forgotten that one person’s good practice is another person’s misplaced ideology. In the report , we examined a range of educational approaches and considered good practice within each of those. This paper is based on a set of papers presented by the authors at the 19th International Congress on the Education of the Deaf. 55 Problems in Defining Good Practice: What Definition? The notion of good practice is tied up with very complex discussions about the nature of “effective schools.” Obviously, the outcomes of the education provided by a school, judged by the academic performance of its pupils, should play an important part in identifying good practice. However, a simple statement of outcome measures for pupils at the stage they leave school is too simplistic. These issues are currently the subject of lively debate within the literature relating to school effectiveness, and they make it difficult to develop and sustain a simple definition of “good practice” for schools or advisory services for deaf children. There are further tensions between notions of good practice and measures of educational performance. Pupils with special educational needs are explicitly included in U.K. government plans for raising expectations and improving educational outcomes, but the measures of “success” within this context are narrowly defined. Such measures fail to recognize other aspects of “success,” which may be particularly important for deaf pupils. Within the mainstream literature on school effectiveness there is recognition that in addition to data on educational outcomes, a school needs to be evaluated on the attitudes it instils, the behavior it encourages, and the attendance records of pupils. In the case of deaf children, the social and emotional side of development is often emphasized as particularly important. This understanding is clearly reinforced in this review of good practice in deaf education. The shared view of the practitioners and families of deaf children involved in this study was that effective education of deaf children is a broad concept incorporating self-esteem, independence, a positive sense of identity , appropriate social skills, and academic achievement. However, arriving at a definition of good practice, which balances this perception with hard evidence on educational outcomes, is no easy matter. As the Review states, “good self esteem is not a substitute for access to a broad and balanced curriculum ” (Powers et al., p. 40). All of the above problems are issues for any discussion of good practice in deaf education. In presenting the report, our approach has been to consider a range of perspectives from the range of respondents to our questionnaire . The tensions that occur in arriving at a notion of good practice are also discussed in the report. 56 Gregory, Andrews, McCracken, Powers, and Watson [44.197.116.176] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:44 GMT) The Research Project Questionnaires (in both a text format and British Sign Language presented on video) were distributed very widely using all the conventional journals, newsletters, and networks for information known to RNID and the research team. The questionnaire fell into two parts: Part 1 asked for nominations of schools or advisory services for deaf pupils where...