Language education of immigrant d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing multilingual learners – an interview study

ABSTRACT

For newly arrived students who are d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH), language acquisition is particularly complex. The spectrum of initial language situations ranges from no first language to multilingual acquisition contexts. In Germany, there are currently no studies that focus on the education of these learners. This prompted an interview study with six teachers of the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing, investigating how the language education of newly arrived DHH schoolchildren is designed from the perspective of their teachers. The results of the study, which is based on grounded theory methodology, show that teaching this target group presents major challenges. In the face of this, teachers are highly uncertain of how best to meet the needs of their students, as they have neither information on the language development of these students nor suitable assessment tools and language teaching materials to use in class. The results underline the need for (1) research on the language acquisition and development of newly arrived DHH students, (2) the development or adaptation of assessment tools and (3) effective teaching methods and materials, and finally, (4) the development of teacher training possibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant
• d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH)
• language education
• teacher interviews

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘deal’ is a medical term referring to individuals with little or no functional hearing. ‘Deaf’ is a sociological term referring to individuals who are medically deaf who identify with and participate in the Deaf culture, society and language. The term “d/Deaf” is ‘used as a collective noun to refer to both those “Deaf” people who identify with the Deaf culture and those “deaf” people who do not’ (Canadian Association of the Deaf 2015).

2 A survey conducted in 2017 by Becker and Juche (2018) of school management at special schools with a focus on hearing and communication provides initial demographic data on refugee students (e.g. language, country of origin) and their schooling (e.g. type of schooling, challenges, needs, resources).

3 In the following, ‘DML’ refers to DHH Multilingual Learners (Cannon, Guardino, and Gallimore 2016) whose family languages do not correspond to the (spoken and signed) languages of the wider community but who may not have immigrated themselves.

4 There are two exceptions: for children who have been successfully provided with technical aids (e.g. cochlear implants), the simultaneous acquisition of two spoken languages is fairly unproblematic under favourable conditions; for deaf children of deaf parents, the simultaneous acquisition of two sign languages is similar to that of two spoken languages in hearing children (cf. Kaul and Ludwig 2018, 84f.).

5 The names of educational institutions designated for DHH students vary depending on the German federal state. Following Gräfen and Wessel (2018, 36), the term ‘hearing and communication support centers’ is used here.

6 An overview of the approach can be found in the works of the founders Glaser and Strauss (2005) as well as in Strübing (2014), Pentzold, Bischof, and Heise (2018) and Breuer, Muckel, and Dieris (2019).

7 The interview guide is publicly available at https://osf.io/6p9q4/?view_only=6aa83fe92b8040ca8e633975f96d2d5a.

8 In practice, it can be assumed that there is a tendency towards a successive change from separate language teaching to language support. Due to its schematic nature, the GT (Figure 1) cannot depict these dynamics in their complexity.

9 All quotations were translated from German into English by the student assistant Anna Gorsch.

10 The interview data show that individualised approaches are the guiding principle for working with all DHH students. At the same time, for the teachers, individualisation is the central feature of the language education processes for IDML. The author therefore came to the conclusion that ‘individual and diverse’ most accurately describes the core category and decided not to specify it further.

11 Representing spoken language at the phonemic level through handshapes is in Germany known as Phonemic Manual System (PMS) (Phonembestimmtes Manualsystem).

12 This term is adapted from the english term Signed English. In Signed German (known in Germany as lautsprachbegleitendes Gebärden), every word of a spoken sentence is signed. It uses German language grammar and not the grammar of DGS.