SUMMARY:
In the education of deaf students, an enduring challenge has been finding ways to promote the development of reading proficiency in the absence of auditory access to the target language. One approach adopts and adapts research and methodologies associated with bilingual education. American Sign Language (ASL)/English bilingual education for deaf students posits that early access to a visual language, ASL, and an environment which equally embraces both languages through the application of language planning principles provides an optimal foundation for literacy. However, the adoption of this change in perspective has been hampered by a perception of ASL as a minority language with lower status than English (Enns, 2006; Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001; Grosjean, 2008; Hermans, Ormel, & Knoors, 2010; Musselman, 2000; Snoddon, 2008). The lower status of ASL and of deaf people may explain why the perspectives of deaf parents and professionals have generally not been included in the plethora of studies about reading and deaf individuals (Easterbrooks, 2005; Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001; LaSasso & Mobley, 1997, Luckner, Sebald, Conney, Young, & Muir, 2005). For the most part, reading research with the deaf population has been from an etic perspective. The questions asked, and the frameworks used have largely been based on assumptions about language development and competencies contingent upon and from the perspective of being able to hear. Our study was undertaken with the goal of obtaining that heretofore little-examined emic, or insider, perspective. Emic or insider input to research taps into the experiences and beliefs of members of the culture or population being studied and can guide the questions or hypotheses to be subsequently explored with a larger sample using more a discrete design and standardized or objective measurements or tools (Morris et al, 1999). We asked deaf professionals and parents of deaf children what they observed about the process of becoming a skilled reader, based on their own personal and professional experiences and observing their children and students at close range. The research team members, deaf bilinguals with considerable experience in the education of deaf students, sought to turn this sociocultural lens on deaf readers transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. Results from twelve interactive semi-structured interviews indicate that informal and formal teaching and learning practices in ASL/English bilingual homes and classrooms which value, reinforce and support the bidirectional acquisition of both languages provide a foundation for literacy and propels this transition.
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