Languages and languaging in deaf education: A framework for pedagogy

This text addresses two main questions about deaf children’s language and learning. The first of these is concerned with how we understand and describe deaf children’s language use and experience in terms of current concepts of language plurality and diversity. The second asks how knowledge of, and a different perspective on, deaf children’s language diversity and pluralism can inform pedagogy. The text reviews the knowledge available about deaf children’s bimodal bilingualism and learning and extends this knowledge to embrace deaf children’s multilingual language experiences and lives. This review raises questions about how well we understand the diverse and plural language repertoires of deaf children and how they can be brought into play in the learning context. Concepts of languaging and translanguaging are introduced as a way of examining how deaf children flexibly use language for learning, and in their everyday lives. A pedagogical framework is proposed that combines dialogic teaching and translanguaging to offer a dynamic response to language diversity and plurality. It is argued that, an approach that combines dialogic teaching and translanguaging privileges manner over mode and deconstructs dichotomies and inhibitors around sign and spoken language pedagogies. This approach to language use in the classroom is explored in practice as one that facilitates the critical and creative use of language repertoires, values individual language, and cultural identities, facilitates the teaching of curriculum content and language, and fully engages individuals in the learning process. This fresh perspective on languages and languaging in deaf education brings new understandings of children’s language repertoire and competency to the field of language education and research and further extends the meaning and application of dynamic plurilingual pedagogies.