In Sri Lanka, about 300,000 Sinhala speaking people are either deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and would benefit from a common Sinhala sign language, technological resources such as captioning, and educational and social support. There is no fully developed common sign language for members of the Sinhalese community, a severe shortage of sign…

For much of the history of deaf education, spoken language bilingualism was not considered a viable goal. It was believed that given the challenges of meaningful auditory access, age-appropriate development in even one language would be daunting. However, implementation of universal newborn hearing screening during the early 2000s, along with…

Vygotsky's (1993) "Fundamentals of Defectology" is a radical's handbook of deaf and disability studies. Vygotsky's overall research program views disabilities, including deafness, from an integrated biosocial and critical theory standpoint. In two movements, I introduce an "American Annals of the Deaf Special Issue" on…

Research rarely focuses on how deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students address mathematical ideas. Complexities involved in using sign language (SL) in mathematics classrooms include not just challenges, but opportunities that accompany mathematics learning in this gestural-somatic medium. The authors consider DHH students primarily as learners of…

Deaf education research and practice have not always lived up to the ideal of improving deaf students' lives. Consequently, we have constructed novel arguments supporting deaf pedagogy using pragmatic ethics, the aim of which is to increase benefit and decrease harm to individuals and society. The ideal of "harm reduction" asks the…

The African worldview of Ubuntu predates Vygotskian theory, but the Ubuntu view that the community defines the person aligns uncannily with Vygotsky's biosocial proposition and contemporary conceptions of deaf ontology and epistemology. Unlike prevailing Euro-American thought, Ubuntu accentuates the view that it is not any physical or…

Lev Vygotsky (1993) described deaf ontology as dynamic interactions that uniquely but inexorably synthesize biology and society. The "deaf biosocial condition" is a deceptively simple theory. Principally, it clarifies imbricated issues of axiology, power, and knowledge by centering positive adaptive compensations that sublate deafness.…

The Indiana Department of Education's (IDOE's) Accessibility and Accommodations Information for Statewide Assessments is intended for school-level personnel and decision-making teams as they prepare for and implement Indiana statewide assessments. Information is provided for school personnel as a reference to inform guidance on universal features,…