Educating Deaf Students: Global Perspectives

Educating Deaf Children in Two Languages

Educating Deaf Children in Two Languages CHARLOTTE EVANS
This chapter describes a study of literacy learning in Deaf children who acquire American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language and learn to read and write English as a second language.1 Literacy can be defined beyond the basic tasks of reading and writing to include the strong connection between language learning and the individual’s thinking, identity, and community . This framework emphasizes the importance of literacy acquisition for all individuals, including deaf people, and the problems that can occur when literacy in this broad sense is impaired. Overall, there is agreement that early exposure to ASL allows deaf children to establish an effective way to communicate and interact with the world around them (Paul & Quigley, 1987). Disagreements arise in how this knowledge should be applied to guide them into reading and writing English . We know that deaf children who grow up in an ASL environment learn ASL in ways analogous to hearing children learning their spoken language (Meier, 1991; Pettito & Marentette, 1991). What we do not know is how deaf children learn to read and write English. There is now growing evidence from case studies to support bilingually focused alternative conceptions and pedagogies as successful in the language and literacy education of deaf children, and that evidence deserves further exploration. Bilingualism and Deaf Children Although bilingual education programs have been accepted as beneficial for hearing children for several decades, the idea of deaf education as a form 1. Following the convention proposed by Woodward (1972), I use lower-case deaf to refer to the audiologic condition of not hearing and upper-case Deaf to refer to deaf children and adults who share a language—American Sign Language—and a culture. In addition, deaf is also used inclusively to refer to all children with hearing losses, including those who may eventually become Deaf children or adults. 139 of bilingual education is recent (Strong, 1988). The movement to teach English to deaf students as a second language came out of the research documenting natural sign languages of Deaf communities as languages (Baker & Battison, 1980; Johnson, Liddell, & Erting, 1989). As this research became widely known, Deaf people throughout the world began to identify themselves as a linguistic minority rather than a disabled group. Gradually, the shift to cultural affiliation has influenced some deaf education programs to change their focus from special education to bilingual education, although many programs have not yet accepted the use of a natural sign language for school communication. Bilingual Deaf Education (BDE) differs from other bilingual programs in significant ways. The first difference is in language modality. Proponents of BDE advocate that students’ first language be a natural visual-spatial language such as ASL (Davies, 1991; Johnson et al., 1989). Such a language, they argue, functions and is represented mentally in ways analogous to spoken languages, therefore the difference in modality is of no relevance. Evidence for this position is based on linguistic (Klima & Bellugi, 1979), developmental (Meier, 1991), and neurological research (Bellugi, Poizner, & Klima, 1989). Another significant feature of BDE is that the first languages, ASL, and other natural sign languages do not have a written form. Some have argued that this feature will reduce transfer of proficiency from ASL to English (Mayer & Wells, 1996; Ritter-Brinton, 1996). The argument assumes, however , that literacy consists only of the reading and writing components of language. When literacy is defined more broadly, it includes the ability to use appropriate language forms depending on the social context. Schley (1992) studied the ability of Deaf children to modify their ASL use in contextualized and decontextualized language situations and found that the children did produce different types of language appropriate to the situations . Their literacy-related and metalinguistic skills were part of the deeper structures of ASL, and knowledge of them transferred across languages in bilingual children. By expanding the definition of literacy in this way, bilingual proficiency and literacy would be expected to develop even where one language does not have a written form. BDE differs from both bilingual education in heritage languages and bilingual education in second-language immersion programs in that the family language background of deaf children is not consistent. Among chil140 Charlotte Evans dren born deaf, fewer than 10% come from families with even one Deaf parent or older Deaf relative (Meadow, 1972; Trybus & Jensema, 1978). For most parents, their deaf child is the first deaf person they...