Re-Envisioning Learning and Teaching in Deaf Education: Toward New Transactions Between Research and Practice

This chapter examines concepts of learning and how they can be applied in working with deaf children and the adults who support their learning. These issues are discussed from a multilingual perspective, recognizing the increasingly plural and dynamic use of sign and spoken languages in deaf children’s daily lives and the need for pedagogies that respond to these complex language and learning issues. This chapter illustrates how issues of learning can become separated or omitted from discussions about language in deaf education; this sometimes inhibits fruitful transactions between research and practice. Using case studies, an ecological framework is proposed as a way of integrating language and learning issues and expanding concepts of learning in this field. The role of the teacher of the deaf is analyzed using this framework, and implications for professional development and the creation of an expansive learning community are explored.