Students who are deaf and use sign language frequently have language delays that affect their literacy skills. Students who use American Sign Language (ASL) often lack fluent language models in both the home and school settings, delaying both the development of a first language and the development of literacy in printed English. Mediated and…

The ongoing debate on Deaf epistemologies reflects two major paradigms in deaf education: positivism and constructivism. The present article investigates Deaf epistemologies through a metaparadigm, which should blur the boundaries among different paradigms and connect the epistemological inquiry to instructional practice for d/Deaf students. The…

The article stresses the importance of teaching deaf children to think and learn through the development of meaning-making and meaning-sharing capacities. Classroom practices should thus be content focused and actively engage students in American Sign Language to develop general literacy. (CL)

This commentary reviews the articles in this theme issue and analyzes American Sign Language (ASL) bilingual approaches to supporting children with deafness in acquiring English text skills. Also discussed are theoretical explanations for how bilingual contexts may contribute to progress in English literacy and spoken English. Issues for the…

A literature-based rationale for teaching American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary language system for deaf children elaborates on the following points: Sign languages are visual-manual; spoken languages are oral-aural. Competency in a first language tremendously increases a person's ability to learn a second language. Deaf children have not…