‘Behind the teacher's back’: an ethnographic study of deaf people's schooling experiences in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

Historically, the valuing of deaf children's voices on their own schooling has been underrepresented in educational policies, curriculum frameworks and discursive practices and, in particular, in the debates and controversies surrounding oralism and Irish Sign Language in deaf education in Ireland. This article discusses children's everyday lived experiences of oralism and Irish Sign Language using ethnographic interviews and observational methods. The data yielded narrative understandings of how deaf children's schooling experiences served as a cauldron for the development of time, space and relational domains for individual and collective self-expression, cultural production and reproduction of the secret lore and understandings of Irish Sign Language and development of a hidden curriculum of sign language in a policy and practice context dominated by oralism. This paper concludes with recommendations for the development of a sign bilingual curriculum across the full scope and sequence of schooling in Ireland.

Keywords:

• deaf people
• deaf schooling
• oralism
• sign language
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Anne O'Byrne, lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, and Dr Patricia Mannix McNamara, lecturer at University of Limerick, who contributed immensely to the quality, rigour and spirit of this text.

Notes on contributors

Noel Patrick O'Connell graduated with a Ph.D. in Education (Sociology) from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick in 2013. His doctoral research specialised in a critical auto-ethnographic study of deaf people's experience of education and culture in the Republic of Ireland. His research interests include, but are not limited to, critical (auto) ethnography, Deaf Education and Deaf Studies, Irish Sign language, Deafhood Studies, Post-modernism and Post-colonial Theory.

Jim Deegan is Professor and Head of the Graduate School, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of teacher education policy and practice, the sociology of children and childhood and qualitative research methods. He is the Co-ordinator of the MIC Structured Ph.D. (Education) degree programme and Director of the MIC International Research Methods Summer School (IRMSS).