Internationalising Deafness & Education International

Inside the front cover of this Deafness and Education International (D&EI) issue you will see our newly established Editorial Board with Executive Editors from five global regions: Africa, Americas North and South, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and Oceania. For each region we now welcome Associate Review Editors chosen through a process supported by D&EI’s two professional associations - the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf (BATOD) and the National Association of Australian Teachers of the Deaf (NAATD). In early 2020, we will seek additional Associate Review Editors to make up a full Board of five Executive Editors and five Associate Review Editors from each global region. Additionally, we are very pleased to welcome Joy Rosenberg as D&EI’s newly appointed Book Review Editor; if you would like to represent a global region as a book reviewer, please see the expression of interest in D&EI’s next issue.

In this issue, we have articles or book reviews from all five global regions. Colourful Semantics is an example of an intervention often used with children who are deaf but so far scarcely evaluated. From Sri Lanka, Shyamani Hettiarachchi and Mahishi Ranaweera’s article explores its use in two deaf schools in an intervention implemented by class teachers. A team of researchers from Ottawa in Canada, Vivian Grandpierre and colleagues, investigate the views of audiologists and speech and language therapists working in early years health services in relation to their work with children who are deaf from minority community backgrounds. The article raises important issues; practitioners who are not culturally aware may make assumptions about these families or neglect to engage services such as interpreters. Daniel Fobi and Alexander Oppong introduce an overview of historical developments in deaf education in Ghana, looking at colonial and post-colonial influences on communication approaches and secondary exam results. Khalid Alasim and Peter Paul investigate the views of both teachers of deaf children and ordinary class teachers in Saudi Arabia towards the inclusion of students who are deaf, with findings suggesting neutrality towards inclusion, as at present most class teachers have little experience of teaching deaf children. Becoming skilled in a country’s sign language is perhaps the most noteworthy challenge facing hearing teachers of children who are deaf globally. Denise Powell, Anita Boon and John Luckner report on research evaluating the improving New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) skills of teachers of children who are deaf in New Zealand. The individual coaching approach where teachers identify their own NZSL learning goals has much to offer other countries. Finally, we review a book about deaf education from Latin America. There is a vibrant deaf education research culture and are many pedagogical innovations in South America, particularly around bilingual education, although not often discussed in written English Journals.

Linking up these global regions, we look forward to meeting many D&EI readers at the ICED2020 Congress in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2020. Our exhibit will be alongside NAATD, the organisation organising the Congress. Please come to talk to us about papers you have seen which inspire you, or research you are involved with which could become an article in D&EI. As Editors-in-Chief of Deafness & Education International we are working toward a more international future and stronger global connections between readers and researchers, deaf and hearing.