Educating for Bilingualism in Different Contexts: teaching the deaf and teaching children with English as an additional language

Abstract

Teachers of the deaf and teachers of children with English as an additional language have independently been debating the idea of supporting bilingualism as a possible goal of education. The situations of these two groups of children are quite different. This paper explores what parallels may exist between them in terms of perspectives on their education, their experiences of discrimination, their communication environment and the significance for them of integration at school. The paper concludes with an analysis of the special needs of deaf children from ethnic and linguistic minority communities.