Debunking the Myths of American Sign Language in Academic Settings
Temas
Detalles
For Deaf children whose primary language is American Sign Language (ASL) in the United States and parts of Canada, the chief target language of schooling was, is, and will be English literacy development. National, state, district, and local learning standards are English-centric and reinforce English as the language of pedagogy (i.e., curriculum, instruction, and assessment). We believe Deaf children should develop English and ASL literacy in school while respecting their home languages. The latter related to ASL literacy development is largely ignored mainly because of ignorance, misunderstanding, and language bias. While English is the primary language of pedagogy in most classrooms, this chapter discusses the role of ASL as the language of pedagogy, interpretation, and translation to support student learning. Unquestionably, from an American educational system standpoint, Deaf children are expected to develop prociency in English before they enter the workplace. They should be expected to develop prociency in ASL as well. This chapter supports the view in the literature that ASL can be used to build content knowledge for academic learning and as a bridge to learning English, and vice versa, noting that there are studies that show a correlation between ASL and English pro- ciency. These practices are supported by work demonstrating how the processing of English print is facilitated by knowledge funds of ASL, and in ASL (Andrew et al., 2014; Henner et al., 2016; Novogrodsky et al., 2014; Scott & Homeister, 2017). We recognize that the best approach to educate Deaf students is through direct twoway multilingual instruction from qualied and competent Deaf and hearing teachers who are trained to teach Deaf students instead of through a mediated educational setting using a third-party interpreter. Yet we recognize that a large number of Deaf students are currently attending mainstreamed programs with educational interpreters, and we cannot ignore this reality. As educational professionals in the eld of Deaf education, it is our responsibility to provide the knowledge, training, and tools that ensure Deaf students are provided with an optimal access to content within academic classrooms.
En Elizabeth A. Winston y Stephen B. Fitzmaurice (Eds.), Advances in Educational Interpreting.