The rise of globalisation makes language competencies more valuable, both at individual and societal levels. This book examines the links between globalisation and the way we teach and learn languages. It begins by asking why some individuals are more successful than others at learning non-native languages, and why some education systems, or…

Third- and fourth-grade students in two separate classrooms--one a classroom with only hearing students and the other a coenrolled classroom with hearing, hard of hearing, and deaf students--were assessed to determine friendship patterns, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about sign language and deafness. Sociograms, interviews, and videotape…

Traditional classrooms are not being designed with deaf and hard of hearing learners in mind. Providing equal learning opportunities with the use of appropriate instructional design strategies to deaf and hard of hearing learners requires that instructional designers, faculty, and educational institutions understand what accommodations and…

Individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing are just like other students except they do not hear as well. They come in all shapes and sizes and call themselves by many names such as: deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing impaired. Just remember the student is a person first--and should be treated the same as anyone else. The biggest issue a residence…

This article examines several legal cases in Canada, the USA, and Australia involving signed language in education for Deaf students. In all three contexts, signed language rights for Deaf students have been viewed from within a disability legislation framework that either does not extend to recognizing language rights in education or that…

The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language…

In light of the absence of a codified standard variety in British Sign Language and German Sign Language ("Deutsche Gebardensprache") there have been repeated calls for the standardization of both languages primarily from outside the Deaf community. The paper is based on a recent grounded theory study which explored perspectives on sign…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of executive functions (EF) in theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in deaf children and adolescents. Four groups of deaf children aged 7-16 years, with different language backgrounds at home and at school, that is, bilingually instructed native signers, oralist-instructed native signers, and…

The general purpose of this study was to investigate effective practices of interpreting education programs in the United States as measured by the readiness to credential gap. The increasing demand for interpreters has created an environment with under-credentialed interpreters and this is compounded by the fact that the field of interpreter…

American Sign Language (ASL) is ranked fourth among heritage languages taken by students in the United States. The number of ASL classes offered at the K-12 and Institutions of Higher Education are on the rise, yet the number of certified ASL teachers remains stagnant. This study examines the reasons why American Sign Language teachers choose to…

Deaf teachers around the world have folk models and beliefs that reflect their understanding of what deaf children need to learn in order to develop healthy identities as deaf people. In this research we report what teachers from England, the USA and Mexico have told us about using creative signing with deaf children. Themes emerging from our data…

Background: There is a dearth of assessments of sign language development in young deaf children. This study gathered age-related scores from a sample of deaf native signing children using an adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 1994). Method: Parental reports on children's receptive and expressive signing were collected…

Surveys of sign language programs in institutions of higher education in the United States, conducted in 1994 and 2004, are compared to reveal changes over time. Data are presented concerning the institutional environment of programs, program administrators, and instructors. Institutions examined in 2004 were on average 5 years older than those…

The purpose of the present research is to examine which of the two factors: (1) the iconic-semiotic factor; or (2) the human-phonetic factor is more relevant in explaining the appearance and distribution of the hand shape B-bent in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). The B-bent shape has been the subject of much attention in sign language research…

This article investigates the role of iconicity in International Sign Language (ISL), as used by interpreters for Deaf people at international conferences. In analyses of ISL, specific issues of iconicity (e.g., degree of abstractness, levels of application, competing motivations, and universality) are considered and applied to ISL data. The data…