Sign Language in Mainstream Education for the Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Students in Asia

This book describes two ways of incorporating sign language in mainstream education, reflecting direct and indirect communication between and among the participants, teachers and students alike. The focus is on how deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students participate in and react to this educational context with signing support.

The book focuses on two means of recruiting sign language to support deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students in mainstream education in Asia. The first approach is educational sign interpreting, which has been adopted to support signing DHH students in mainstream classrooms in Taiwan. Contributions report on a questionnaire survey with post-hoc interviews examining the reactions of students, parents, a resource teacher and an interpreter towards providing this service in the education system. The second approach is co-enrollment, which is bringing a critical mass of DHH students into the mainstream classroom for them to study with hearing children, supported by either a Deaf teacher or a teacher highly proficient in signing, who can co-teach with the regular teacher and co-share responsibilities in taking care of the whole class of students. The chapters exemplifying this approach report on the effects of co-enrollment on DHH students’ language development and academic attainment.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Deafness & Education International.