Policy and Practice in Sign Bilingual Education: Development, Dilemmas and Directions

Ruth Swanwick, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Deaf Education
University of Leeds

Abstract

I have been involved in the development of sign bilingual educational policy and practice in England since the 1980s both as a teacher and now as a university lecturer/researcher. My main preoccupation throughout my working life has been the role of sign language in deaf education and issues for deaf children's language and literacy development. This has never been an unambiguous area but the questions ‘where are we now?' and ‘where do we go from here?' have never felt more pressing than now. I would like to take the opportunity of this seminar to share these questions with colleagues across the water and so I will talk about the growth of sign bilingual education in the UK and share what has come out of our most recent analysis of where we are. I will also talk about some of the current dilemmas drawing particularly on my own research into early literacy and also the role of sign language for deaf children with cochlear implants. From this, I hope that we can discuss new directions for sign bilingual education in terms of learning and teaching and a future research agenda.