Sign language planning and policy in Ontario teacher education
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Sign language planning and policy in Ontario teacher education Kristin Snoddon1 Received: 18 February 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Deaf Ontario Now movement of 1988 called for more hiring of deaf teachers and the full implementation of American Sign Language (ASL) across the curriculum in schools with deaf students. In 1989, the Review of Ontario Education Programs for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students recommended that ASL become a language of instruction at the Ernest C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton, Ontario. Subsequently, the school became the site of a pilot bilingual bicultural project that led to the ratification of a policy statement on bilingual bicultural education for deaf children at all three anglophone provincial schools with deaf students in Ontario. In 1993, Bill 4 was incorporated into the Ontario Education Act, sanctioning the use of ASL and Langue des signes québécoise as languages of instruction in all schools for deaf students in Ontario. Despite this seeming progress at the policy level in sign language planning in Ontario deaf education, there has been a marked pattern of resistance to systemic change at levels of government and teacher accreditation, the university teacher of the deaf preparation program established in 1991, and provincial school administration. This paper outlines the trajectory of deaf community activism, policy change, and subsequent resistance. Keywords Deaf education · Sign language policy · Ontario Education Act · Teacher education · American Sign Language · Langue des signes québécoise
Introduction This paper surveys the history of sign language planning and policy in teacher-ofthe-deaf education in Ontario, Canada with regard to the issue of teachers’ sign language proficiency. From the perspective of deaf communities and bilingual education researchers, teachers’ lack of sign language ability is frequently considered to * Kristin Snoddon [email protected] 1
School of Early Childhood Studies, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
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be a root cause of deaf students’ low achievement levels (Hoffmeister 2007; Johnston et al. 2002; Komesaroff 2008; O’Neill 2017). Despite the history of Ontario deaf community advocacy, gaps in sign language status and acquisition planning as pillars of language-in-education planning continue to impact the availability of bilingual education for deaf students by delaying or waiving the requirement that teachers of the deaf be proficient in sign language (Hult and Compton 2012). This paper discusses how the framing of education for deaf students within a special education rather than bilingual education paradigm means that disability oppression intersects with language ideologies to produce inequities in education. This framing is reminiscent of Ruiz’ (1984) language-as-problem orientation that is frequently linked to language minoritized children. Ruiz’ problem, right, and resource orientations in language planning hav
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