TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Behind the teacher's back’
T2 - an ethnographic study of deaf people's schooling experiences in the Republic of Ireland
AU - O'Connell, Noel Patrick
AU - Deegan, Jim
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Educational Studies Association of Ireland.
PY - 2014/7/1
Y1 - 2014/7/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - deaf people
KW - deaf schooling
KW - ethnography
KW - oralism
KW - sign language
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84907577700&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03323315.2014.940683
DO - 10.1080/03323315.2014.940683
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84907577700
SN - 0332-3315
VL - 33
SP - 229
EP - 247
JO - Irish Educational Studies
JF - Irish Educational Studies
IS - 3
ER -