Russell S. Rosen
Teachers and educational practitioners conduct pedagogical activities in sign language as L1 and L2/Ln with children and adults. They develop curriculum, instruct, and evaluate their learners’ learning. Underlying the pedagogical activities are presumptions about the aims and effectiveness of language instruction and the content domains in instruction, curriculum, and assessment. The presumptions are dictated by the goals of a community of language users. The community goals pertain to the domains and levels of achievement and the means for reaching it.
However, in many countries there are no standards in sign language pedagogy. Consequently, there is nonconformity and nonstandardization in sign language instruction, curriculum, and assessment. Teachers and practitioners often revert to their own understanding of what language is, how to teach it, how learners learn, and how to assess learners’ language knowledge and skills. Without an understanding of language, its transmission, and assessment among teachers and learners, a plethora of knowledge and skills may result, with the consequences being the lack of uniformity in language constructions, the teaching and learning of the language, and language abilities among teachers and learners within and across sign language classes.
There is a need to ensure conformity and conjunctions in sign language pedagogy in classes within and across countries. In addition, there is a need to enhance quality assurance in language pedagogy, the professionalization of teachers, and the use of research- and evidence-based data to guide pedagogical language activities. These needs for quality assurance provide the impetus for the development of standards not only in language instruction, curriculum, and assessment, but also language classes and programs, teacher preparatory programs, and teacher development and qualifications. Below are the theoretical constructs in standards.
Standards are a set of domain areas and a level of quality, expectations, and attainments in knowledge and skills in the domain areas. They are the “ought to haves” in knowledge and performance that are deemed as important in society. It is a value system, a product and a process. In standards, the value system is a set of domains that is worth knowing and skilling on, the product is a set of benchmarks, and the process is a series of protocols that reach the benchmarks. The purposes of standards are to ensure that individuals have the knowledge and understanding of the concepts in a domain area and skills in performing tasks effectively. Individuals who meet the standards are endowed with recognition.
The standards in pedagogy contains benchmarks, or milestones, of knowledge and skills in the domain areas of instruction, curriculum, and assessment. They also include protocols, or procedures, for performances that demonstrate the knowledge and skills that meet the benchmarks. The benchmarks and protocols in the standards are measured as outcomes in rubrics that are used to determine qualifications (Taut & Sun, 2014). Individuals in the fields of pedagogy who meet the standards are endowed with different forms of recognition such as degrees, certifications, licensures, and accreditations. The standards are developed to ensure higher learner achievement and teacher quality, and bring professionalism into the field of language pedagogy and learning (Phillips, 1999; Call, 2018). By focusing on the quality and assurance in pedagogy, the standards have an impact on language teaching, course design, testing, and educational policy (Cox, Malone, & Winke, 2018), and learners’ learning performances (Troia, Olinghouse, & Wilson, 2016). Research studies found that learner outcomes are positively correlated with board certified teachers who meet the standards (Belson & Husted, 2015), and where assessments are closely aligned with the standards (Troia, Olinghouse, & Zhang, 2018). This chapter does not cover interpreters; it covers the constituencies that are involved in instruction, curriculum development, and assessment.
There are different standards for different constituencies of pedagogy, which are learners, teachers, practitioners, and teacher training programs. Different social institutions hold the responsibility to develop, oversee, and monitor standards for the different constituencies. In addition, standards vary by countries, states and provinces, and by sources within the countries. The standards and its constituencies and controlling institutions in sign language pedagogy are discussed below.
Different sources contribute to the development of items in the standards for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The constituencies in sign language pedagogy use standards to ascertain their knowledge and skills in curriculum, instruction, and assessment for degrees, certifications, licensures, and accreditations. The following information on standards in each area of pedagogy is drawn from works by Phillips (1999), Ricento (2006), and Tollefson (2013).
The standards for curriculum cover the scope and sequence of content topics; lesson plans and its learning objectives, teaching goals, prerequisite knowledge, sign vocabulary and grammar, conversation tasks, instructional materials, and assignments; and evaluation of learners’ learning and teachers’ teaching. The standards for curriculum in L1 and L2/Ln sign language classrooms are similar, with one difference based on the goals and ideologies of governmental education bodies that develop the standards. The similarities are that the curriculum tends to begin with basic everyday and high-frequency vocabulary and basic grammatical structures, and ends with inflected forms, complicated grammatical structures, and discourses. It also includes information about culture such as the language community and their history, beliefs, behaviors, traditions, arts, and literature. The difference is that in L1 curriculum, teachers and learners use sign language to teach and learn academic subjects, including sign language.
The standards for pedagogy for instruction cover teaching strategies, materials, and medium of presentation, and its appropriateness for the topics and learner population under instruction. They also include the use of language to teach sign language and the use of sign language to teach academic subjects. For L1 sign languages, the standards for instruction concern the materials and strategies for using sign language to teach academic subject matters and transmitting sign language to deaf and hard of hearing learners who use sign language as their L1. For L2/Ln sign languages, the standards for instruction concern the materials and strategies for transmitting sign language to L2/Ln learners. Standard-bearing educational bodies determine the domain areas in instruction.
The standards for assessment cover content domains, test formats, test administration, assessment procedures, media, and rubrics. The standards for assessment are twofold. One is to assess learning outcomes, the other is to assess teacher qualifications. The tests and assessments are measured against a rubric that indicates stages of attainment in language and culture that are in conjunction with the standards for learner learning outcomes and teaching skill assessments. For L1 learners, the standards pertain to knowledge and skills in content areas of academic subject matter, and knowledge and skills in sign language for communication purposes. For L2/Ln learners, the standards for learning objectives include the knowledge and skills in sign language, and about deaf people, community and culture. The standards for qualifications of teachers of L1 sign languages are knowledge and skills in deaf education theories and pedagogies, psychology of deaf children, and literacy. The standards for qualifications of teachers of L2/Ln sign language classrooms include knowledge and skills in linguistics theory and applications; sign language and deaf people, community and culture; and knowledge and skills in pedagogy.
The standards are developed by different sources and there are different standard-bearing institutions. The institutions that are standard bearing develop standards and monitor its fulfillment by its constituencies. A discussion of the role of the different sources in standards development is given below.
The standards on sign language pedagogy is ascertained by the language policy and planning (LPP) of national and local governments. Governments create policy and planning on language in its creation, status, selection, codification, recognition, and implementation, as well as migration, reductions, and closures in society (Haugen, 1983; Hornberger, 2006; Ricento, 2006). There are several aspects of LPP, and the aspects that are relevant in pedagogy are language recognition, status, scope, and implementation. Governments ascertain the status of languages, including its standardization and uses (Kloss, 1968). They create criteria for implementation and allocation of languages in schools and society, and the learning and acquisition of languages (Cooper, 1989). LPPs are developed amidst the complex interplay of social, cultural, and political forces. The forces may lead governments to recognize or not recognize languages, increase or decrease the number and distribution of languages, and to choose between monolingualism and multilingualism for its populace. The LPPs also determine the standards of qualifications for the awarding of degrees, certifications, licensures, and accreditations to different constituencies in pedagogy.
Different countries have different standards based on their different value systems and goals regarding languages. For instance, the US sees English as a globalized language, favored monolingualism for its inhabitants, and offer other languages as a means for them to participate in the world’s peoples and cultures. The European Union favors plurilingualism as transculturality and translanguaging as a method of instruction. China sees the learning of other languages, primarily English, as a tool to obtain scientific and cultural information from the world, and to participate in globalization for nationalistic purposes.
The countries also vary in the statuses of sign languages. The countries’ attitudes and LPP toward languages other than their mother tongue, coupled with their attitudes and LPP toward sign languages, shape sign language distribution, allocation, standards, pedagogy, and purposes. Some countries view sign languages as not languages and that deaf communities do not exist, in which case they do not recognize or legitimatize it, and do not prepare standards. Once a country recognizes sign languages, it would need to create mechanisms to ensure that the languages are offered, the teachers are teaching it, and the learners are learning it. It creates standards in learner outcomes and teacher qualifications. Some countries see sign language as a disability language, in which case sign languages tend to be offered in service professions for interpreters, social workers, and psychologists to learn and use it to work with deaf people. Still other countries view sign languages as a tool and a means to introduce spoken and written mother tongues; under this view sign languages tend to be used in schools and educational programs for the deaf by teachers who use sign languages to teach academic subjects and mother tongues. A few countries view sign language as a culture and deaf people as a cultural and linguistic community. In this case they tend to offer sign languages as one of the foreign or world languages at schools.
Different governmental bodies within countries create different educational programs for different constituencies of sign language pedagogy. The standards for L1 in public policy are built on the value system of governments and localities pertaining to the purposes of education of the deaf and the hard of hearing. Governments devise curricula in deaf and hard of hearing education, including subject matters, number for credits to award, and degree requirements, and create items and criteria in learner and teacher qualifications, examinations, and certifications. The standards for L2/Ln in public policy are built on the value system of governments and localities that pertain to language learning and the learning of different languages, peoples, and cultures. They develop curriculum topics and its scopes and sequences. They establish requirements for learner and teacher world language programs, including courses and course credits, and also create items and criteria in learner and teacher qualifications, examinations, and certifications.
The items in standards may derive from research studies in pedagogy. Research studies conducted by scholars in the areas of pedagogy produce longitudinal, synchronic and cross-sectional diachronic evidence that demonstrate the characteristics, performances, trends, and achievements in pedagogy. The research studies that focus on sign language as L1 and L2/Ln look at its linguistic aspects; acquisition; the effectiveness of sign language use in teaching, curriculum, and assessment; the history, sociology and anthropology of deaf people, community, and culture; and the effectiveness of learning sign language to learn scholastics and literacy skills. Findings from research studies become parts of the benchmarks and milestones in standards. Governments and education agencies determine standards, and the items and criteria that governments and education agencies create in their standards as they appear in learner degree and teacher certification examinations are guided by research studies in sign language and culture.
Practitioners such as educators and educational developers are another source of standards. They provide instruction, develop curriculum, and prepare assessments for children to learn, use, and demonstrate their knowledge and skills in sign languages. The professional organizations of practitioners, guided by their experiences, knowledge and skills in pedagogical activities, provide recommendations for instruction, curriculum, and assessment in the development of standards. They advise and recommend in the areas of language and communication; the scope and sequence of linguistic aspects of sign languages; and uses and strategies with sign languages in the teaching and learning of scholastic subject matters. The practitioners also advise on teacher training programs where teachers receive preparation according to standards. They also give advice on standards in assessment to ensure quality teaching and learning. For L1, the practitioners provide advice in the use of sign language to teach scholastics and literacy. For L2/Ln, they provide advice in the use of languages in the teaching and learning of L2/Ln sign languages.
Deaf community is another source of standards. Individuals in the Deaf community are knowledgeable about sign language and Deaf culture. In essence, they live the beliefs, traditions, and history of their community. They develop cultural artifacts of arts and literature, major cultural events, ways of life, social and cultural institutions, and worldview throughout its history based on their deafness, use of sign language, their visual orientations, and their relationship with the majority culture of speaking and hearing people. Members of language communities inform standard developers by creating the concepts and items in the standards for sign language pedagogy regarding the constitution of their community and culture; the major events in community history; the language they use; the arts and literature they created; the main cultural activities they conducted within their communities; and experiences in their relationship with the majority (speaking and hearing) culture.
There are different institutional bodies that offer recognition of sign language and develop standards in sign language pedagogy. The major institutional bodies that are both the sources and developers of standards are the national, state and local governments; organizations affiliated with governments; colleges and universities; professional organizations; and language communities. They established the domain areas, concepts and constructs; provide mechanisms and skill tasks for the execution of knowledge and understanding of the concepts and constructs; and set expectations for its maintenance and enhancement. Social institutions and their ideologies and practices determine standards. Different institutional bodies develop and oversee different standards for different constituencies in sign language pedagogy, including learner outcomes and teacher qualifications for learner and teacher degrees; licensure of teachers and practitioners; and accreditation of, admission into, and graduation from TPP programs in L1 and L2/Ln sign languages.
These standard-bearing institutions also differ in the degree of enforcement of the standards and the constituencies they serve. The standards may either be legally or not legally binding to its constituencies. The standards that are developed by governmental education institutions cover learner degrees and teacher licensures; the standards that are developed by practitioner organizations cover teacher and educator membership; and the standards that are developed by language communities are advice for individuals who wish to work with certain populations. Only the standards that are developed by the government educational institutions are legally binding and enforced as an act of law. The standards that are legally binding pertain to the requirements for degrees and certificates for learners, and licensure and credentialing for teachers and practitioners. The standards that are not legally binding to its constituents tend to be developed as criteria for membership and accreditation of individuals and programs. The standard-bearing institutions of which standards are not legally binding tend to consist of professional organizations of researchers, teachers, educator practitioners, and programs. The organizations of practitioners may be affiliated or not affiliated with government bodies. Their standards are not legally binding unless they are contracted with the governmental bodies to give assessments on learner and/or teacher qualifications. Professional organizations can enforce their standards for membership purposes, but they can only give recommendations to governing bodies in the development of items and protocols in standards. Language communities do not create standards, but they provide advice to standard-bearing governmental education bodies.
There is a web of interconnections between public policy, research, practice, and communities in the development of standards for pedagogy. Public policy is influenced by the value system of the countries and localities, findings from research studies, recommendations from the practitioners, and information from community members. Research studies are guided by theories of learning, teaching, testing, practitioners’ experiences, and the life ways of language communities. Pedagogical practice is shaped by public policy, research studies, practitioners’ experiences with past practices, and developments in language communities. The developments in language communities are often shaped by its value systems and developments in general society that dictate their life ways, which in turn provide new information for research, practice, and public policy.
In addition, there is a cycle in the development of standards (cf. Tollefson, 2013). The cycle begins with the recognition of the problems and issues in the instruction and acquisition of languages. Examples are concerns about learner outcomes and teacher quality, which call for a revisit to the standards (Call, 2018). Following this are expressions of concerns and suggestions for changes made by organizations of researchers, teachers, practitioners, and language communities. Researchers conduct studies on instruction and learning and inform the findings about effective practices in pedagogy. The researchers, practitioners, and members of language communities meet with and provide new findings to government agencies that oversee education. The cycle ends with the governments developing and disseminating standards for instruction, curriculum, and assessment for its schools. In cases where the standards do not reflect the instruction, curricular, and assessment practices, they become the problem and the topic for further action. The governments reconsider and remake the standards, and the cycle repeats.
Educators such as teachers would need to modify their instruction and curriculum to align with standards. In times of changing standards, teachers often find themselves taken aback and unprepared to teach following the new standards (Lovett & Lee, 2017). For teachers who do not know how to translate standards to teaching and developing curriculum (e.g., McBride & Goedecke, 2012), modify curriculum to meet changing standards (Sleeter & Carmona, 2016), or modify curriculum to respond to changing demographics of the learner (Ellis et al., 2017), there are researchers and practitioners who aid in interpreting the standards and suggest curriculum modifications and teaching strategies (e.g., Crawford, 2011).
There are different standards for L1 and L2/Ln sign language pedagogies across countries and institutions based on different constellations of government structures and institutional sources of public policy, research studies, practitioners, and language communities. Different countries have different standards based on different ideologies regarding languages, peoples, and cultures. For instance, Zhang and Yin (2014) compared Chinese standards and US standards in literacy. The US standards emphasize reading, writing, speaking, listening, and teaching aims, contents, language skills, and use of technology. Chinese standards emphasize knowledge and ability, process and methods, and emotion, attitude, and values. Standards that are developed globally are subjected to its further shaping by national and regional needs and discourses (Fenwick, 2017). In addition, there are different configurations in the web of interconnections between public policy, research studies, pedagogy practices, and language communities in the development of standards for first, second, and additional languages within and across countries. The following is an exposition of the different standards that are developed in different countries where sign language pedagogy is provided.
Standards in sign language pedagogy are found only in countries of which LPPs allow recognition of sign language through constitutional or legislative means as a minority language that is embedded within the country where a mother language is a spoken language. There are different levels of recognition of sign language. They include implicit recognition based on common practices. Examples of common practices are sign language use in schools for the deaf with deaf and hard of hearing children, and in colleges where learners who wish to work with deaf people are required to learn their sign languages so they can communicate with them at their places of employment. The recognition of sign languages also include explicit recognition in the form of legislation. The legislations may be constitutional modifications or additions to existing laws and regulations. In countries where sign language received explicit recognition, governments develop guidelines that are either suggestive for institutions to follow and is not legally binding, or are required and legally binding, particularly in cases where individuals who work with deaf people need to demonstrate sign language knowledge and pedagogy skills as a part of their education, degree, certification, and licensure requirements.
Countries vary in the mechanisms through which their LPPs operationalize for sign languages. Many countries have legislation that recognizes sign language for communication and a few countries require its inhabitants to take sign language for diplomas, certificates and licensure. Even fewer countries developed standards for education purposes in L2/Ln classrooms. That countries adopt L2/Ln standards indicate their support for integrating the general population with deaf community and to have general society people expand their repertoire of foreign or world languages so they can communicate with different people using different languages and following different cultures. Almost no country has developed standards for sign language in L1 classrooms at schools and programs with deaf and hard of hearing children. That almost no country develops L1 sign language standards may attest to the power of spoken languages in education and the expectation of its children to master spoken language literacy in their home countries. In addition, some standards in certain countries apply to either L1 or L2/Ln, and standards in other countries apply to both L1 and L2/Ln languages.
For purposes of explication, two models of standards are discussed here. A brief history and participants in the development of standards in the standard-bearing institutions are first given. Following this is a discussion of the different standards. The discussion of each standard includes the purposes and constituent audiences; a description of the domains, topical areas, and language structures; the benchmarks, scoring system, and levels; and a description of the protocols, including conversation tasks and instruction, for meeting the standards. Examples are selected to show transformations in LPP and attitudes and its effects on sign language recognition, distribution, and allocation. They are the US and UK.
International inter-government organizations and collaborative efforts develop standards that are based on language rights and the diversity of languages and cultures across countries. Examples are the European Union’s The Common European Framework Reference For Languages ‒ Standards and the PRO-Sign consortium in the EU.
The European Union (EU) is a multilingual and multicultural constellation of 28 countries in Europe. They seek to promote plurilingualism and linguistic diversity for Europeans so they can communicate with each other across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and to ensure standardization of expectations in linguistic and cultural knowledge and skills for language learners, educators, and practitioners. To this end, the EU developed The Common European Framework Reference for Languages (CEFR), which is a set of standards for teaching, learning, and assessment, and includes levels of proficiency. The standards contain personal, social, occupational, and educational topics and situations, and are fulfilled in tasks through a communicative approach in language instruction. The sign language learner is expected to understand and speak everyday expressions, phrases, and sentences; ask and answer simple questions; describe and exchange information, experiences, thoughts, viewpoints, and give reasons; understand and communicate main ideas of text; interact with native speakers, and give viewpoints; and use language under different situations and topics. CEFR sets six levels of benchmark proficiency and three pairs of designation, and allows split-levels. They are A1 and A2 (termed as “Waystage”); B1 (termed as “Threshold”) and B2 (“Vantage”); and C1 (“Effective Operational Proficiency”) and C2 (“Mastery”) levels. CEFR sets assessment protocols and curriculum guidelines for each level. Assessment under CEFR guidelines include reading and listening, spoken production and interaction, and writing. Scoring for test performance cover the range, accuracy, fluency, interaction, and coherence in spoken language use. CEFR guidelines also contain curriculum guidelines and assessment measures on topics and language structures for all levels, that start with basic vocabulary and grammar with topics on personal information and daily activities at the A1‒A2 level and ends with complex linguistic structures and social and cultural topics at the C1‒C2 level. CEFR requires that children and adults have different assessment scales each with age-appropriate topics, tasks, and situations.
There are ongoing attempts by deaf and hearing people in the European Union to develop and align national sign language curricula to CEFR. The ProSign Project was established in early twenty-first century to develop European standards for sign language proficiency levels for professional purposes for sign language teaching, Deaf studies, and sign language interpreting programs (Leeson & Byrne-Dunne, 2009; Leeson & Grehan, 2009). Participants from EU countries worked together at PRO-Sign workshops to align the sign language curriculum in the different EU countries with CEFR standards (Council of Europe 2001; Leeson et al., 2016). As of 2018, not every EU country completed curriculum alignment to CEFR Standards A1 through C2. Leeson et al. (2018) reported that 23 countries have developed curricula for A1 through A2, and a handful of countries completed curricula for A1 through C2.
In some countries, national governments provide recognition of sign languages and develop standards for instruction, curriculum, assessment, learner outcomes, teacher qualifications, and teacher training programs in either L1 or L2/Ln or both sign languages. They outline coursework, projects, and practical experiences as the domain areas in curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and establish benchmarks for learner diplomas, teacher certifications, and practitioner licensures. The learners, teachers, and practitioners are given assessments that assess their knowledge and skills in the domain areas. An example is British Sign Language in the United Kingdom.
The standards for teaching and learning British Sign Language (BSL) in the United Kingdom (UK) were developed as a result of a collaborative effort by a consortium of British universities including Lancaster University, University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), and the DCAL Centre of the University College London (UCL). The BSL curricula are based on the work that was done by the CEFR PRO-Sign Project for A1 through B2. The BSL curricula for CEFR C1 and C2 are currently not available.
The standards for teachers of BSL as both an L1 and L2 were developed by the Institute of British Sign Language (iBSL), which is a UK awarding organization that is accredited by the Office of the Regulator for Qualifications and Examinations (Ofqual). The iBSL provides qualifications, or certificates, in BSL Studies for individuals who teach BSL as L2/Ln to children and adults, teachers of deaf children who are L1 BSL users, communication support workers, interpreters, and professional and lecture positions at colleges and universities (Institute of British Sign Language, 2018). The IBSL Level 6 Award in BSL Studies is the qualifying level for individuals in the fields. The qualification consists of three mandatory units, which are BSL linguistics and theory, and the ability to understand and use BSL in a wide range of work situations. The iSBL assesses receptive skills, translation skills, project presentation, narrative, group debate, a written or signed essay, observations where questions are answered on paper, and live observations using BSL. Information about cultural conventions is included.
No deaf and hard of hearing children who use BSL as their L1 language are assessed in BSL signing knowledge and skills. They are assessed in academic subjects of English language reading and writing, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, and a world language for diplomas. Teachers use BSL as the language of communication and instruction with the deaf children who use BSL. Teachers in the UK who are working for the Mandatory Qualification in teaching deaf children and young people would need to have the professional qualities, attributes, knowledge, understanding, and skills in deaf people and their language and environment, deaf education, and pedagogy (Simpson, 2017). All current and prospective trainee teachers must pass the skills tests in numeracy and literacy before they are recommended for the award of qualified teacher status (QTS). In addition to the above, teachers of the deaf using BSL in L1 classrooms would need to be certified in deaf and hard of hearing education. Three different degrees lead to qualified teacher status (QTS) for teaching at different scholastic grade levels. The Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree is awarded to individuals to become primary school teachers, and the Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) degrees are awarded to individuals to become secondary school teachers. Individuals in fields other than education can apply for a postgraduate teacher training program by taking a subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) course that is available in math, physics, languages, biology, chemistry, computing, English, geography, and design and technology.
In other countries, intra-national state or provincial governmental agencies and departments give the recognition of sign language and the standards for diplomas and licensure. They develop standards for learner diplomas, teacher certifications, and partition licensure to individuals within the state or province. This is found for American Sign Language (ASL) in the US. In the US, state education departments oversee the provision of world, foreign, and modern languages in both K-12 schools and colleges and universities. The states that recognize ASL oversee its provisions as the language of communication in L1 classrooms and as a world, foreign, or modern language in L2/Ln classrooms. They met with a consortium of researchers in colleges and universities, professional organizations of teachers of sign language, leaders from the American Deaf community, and parents of deaf children met and developed standards for sign language pedagogy in curriculum and assessment in the 1990s and 2000s. The New York State Education Department is one example.
The New York State Education Department (NYSED), through its education policy Board of Regents, in 1991 recognized American Sign Language (ASL) as a Language Other Than English (LOTE) for instruction and learning in elementary, middle, secondary, and collegiate education. The NYSED recognized that the general population have negative attitudes towards deaf people who use ASL, misconceptions about signed languages, and lack awareness of the Deaf community. As the general society learn about ASL, deaf people, and their community, there will be better communication between themselves and the deaf community. In 1992 an ASL Advisory Group of ASL programs and deaf educational institutions, teachers, and researchers from the field of ASL, the parents of deaf children, and staff of the NYSED developed the Teacher’s Guide for Modern Languages for Communication (New York State Education Department, 1992). They largely cover ASL as L2/Ln. Learners earn LOTE credits for after two years of study for a general diploma and three years of study for a college-preparatory diploma. They also developed guidance for local school districts to develop curricula and programs in ASL. They do not develop standards for instruction, leaving teachers, schools, and school districts to develop instructional strategies that will meet their learners’ unique needs and learning process.
In the NYSED’s LOTE standards for ASL, the learning outcomes for learners are based on their ability to use ASL to communicate about topics under different situations, and to demonstrate knowledge of deaf people, community and culture. The topics for communication pertain to personal information, social life, and the environment. There are specific learning outcomes for each of the three instructional levels, Checkpoints A, B, and C, each covering one instructional year. There are two standards, one for communication skills and the other for cultural understanding. For communication skills, the learners should be able to use appropriate vocabulary and grammar in ASL to communicate with deaf people; tell stories, repeat, rephrase, and present on topics on personal information, social life, and the environment; and to involve themselves in the deaf community and their cultural activities. For cultural understanding, the learners should be able to use ASL and discuss the concepts of culture; identify cultural traits and patterns in the deaf community, and culture; and to compare different subcultures groups within the deaf community. Sign accuracy and the scope of topics are measures of proficiency.
NYSED provides two different sets of assessments in ASL. One is for learners who seek to earn LOTE credits, and the other for individuals who want to become teachers of ASL. For learners, there are two examinations, one on signing skills and the other on cultural understanding. A scoring system is provided, and learners who pass will earn a diploma credit in ASL. Teachers of ASL need to take the New York State Teacher Certification Examination (NYSTCE). There are three parts in the examination for teachers of ASL. They are Liberal Arts, Science and Technology (LAST), which is a test of general knowledge; Test of Written Skills (ATS-W); and the Content Area for ASL with tests in expressive sign production and comprehension, the knowledge of ASL structures and comparisons, and content knowledge in pedagogy. Teachers also need to prepare an Education Teacher Performance Assessment (EdTPA) project with lesson plans, justifications for lessons by citing scholarly literature for support, videotapes of themselves teaching, explanations of teaching strategies, and evaluations of learner homework and test questions and scores. Certificates are awarded to teachers who pass the examinations. In addition, teachers use ASL as the language of instruction and communication with L1 native child users of ASL in a few schools, particularly in schools for the deaf and mainstreaming programs. Like in the UK, no deaf and hard of hearing children who use ASL as their L1 language are assessed by the NYSED for their ASL signing knowledge and skills. NYSED also does not provide standards in teachers’ sign language skills. They do not assess teachers in sign language skills and their skills in using sign language as the language of communication and instruction with the learners who use it as their L1 language. Teachers only need to take the NYSTCE and conduct EdTPA. Teachers of children who are deaf and hard of hearing take the Content Area Test for Deaf and Hard of Hearing covering pedagogical knowledge in deaf education. Some questions pertaining to use of sign language to teach concepts are included in the teaching strategy subtest. Teachers are awarded certificates upon passing the examinations.
Professional organizations of education practitioners develop standards for best practices and accreditation of practitioners. An example is the American Sign Language Teachers Association (ASLTA) in the US.
ASLTA developed the Standards for Learning American Sign Language (Ashton et al., 2014) that follows the Standards for Foreign Language Learning for the Twenty-First Century which are developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), a leading organization of practitioners in world languages as L2 (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 2006). The ACTFL standards are the 5C’s for teaching and learning, which are communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. While the standards are developed primarily for L2/Ln learners, many of the sequences of skills and knowledge contained in these standards may be adapted for L1 learners. ASLTA translated ACTFL’s 5C’s into the following: cultural knowledge of deaf people, and their products and perspectives; connect with, acquire information about, discuss, and provide deaf cultural viewpoints about other disciplines through ASL; compare ASL and deaf culture with other languages and cultures; and using ASL to participate in local and global deaf communities and become lifelong learners. The ASLTA standards are the ability to communicate and have a conversation in ASL, comprehend and interpret live and videotapes of ASL performances, and present information using ASL about ASL and Deaf culture. Topics and benchmarks for each standard are given at K, 4th, 8th, 12th, and 16th grades. ASLTA also provides evaluations of lesson and assessment plans, videotaped teaching, and interviews, and award two-leveled certifications, certified and master, to teachers of ASL. Many US state education departments, such as New Jersey and California, adapted the ASLTA standards. While the following are not part of its standards, ASLTA recommends the use of equipment with a robust ability to display video-based media, classrooms that are large enough to accommodate learners seated in a semi-circular arrangement, and limiting enrollments to 20 or fewer learners per class for effective ASL teaching and learning.
Language communities provide information to government-associated standard developers on language rights, expectations, cultural information, and language structures and practices. One example is the National Association of the Deaf in the US. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is a civic, advocacy organization of, by and for deaf people. They do not create standards, but position papers on ASL and deaf education. The NAD proposes that ASL is used at home and schools to facilitate child language development. Schools for the deaf should also offer ASL-English bilingual education, work with signing deaf people, and increase access for deaf children in their programs and services. As described earlier, the NAD in collaboration with other organizations has been working with federal and state governments in developing their standards.
As Cox, Malone, & Winke (2018) remarked, further work is needed in the field of educational standards. Changing learner and teacher populations challenges the field, and may affect the design, implementation, and appropriation of the standards (Cox, Malone, & Winke 2018). We need more information on the effects of language learning standards on world language instruction, curricular and assessment practices. To these ends, the following are suggested areas for future research studies and pedagogical practices.
Future research studies need to look into the history and impact of standards. There is a need to study the history of the process of standard development, its participants, constituents, impact, and coverages. There is a need to conduct historical studies on the political, social and cultural forces that shape institutional acceptance of sign language, and the development of standards within and across countries, which may inform the countries that do not recognize sign language or do not have standards for the provisions of sign languages. Future studies should also look at the impact of standards on learning and teaching outcomes. In particular, research should study the relationship between standards and its impact on learner learning and teachers’ teaching. The impact of standards on learner achievement needs to be looked at to see if the standards are enhancing learners and teachers to higher outcomes, which is what it is supposed to do. Standards should be evidence-based and should be an ongoing process. Since standards, including domain coverage, theoretical coverages, and institutional coverage, are based on the personal, political, social, and cultural forces, it is important to study how changing sociocultural conditions affect standards. In particular what need to be studied are how changing ideologies shape domains, how changing understanding of the linguistics of sign language shape the communications structures in standards, and how changing standard-bearing institutions with its constellations of ideologies, missions, and practices shape the constituents in the standards.
The enforcement of standards remains an issue. Brady and Bates (2016) found that standards on quality assurance can limit and subvert teaching and learning. Different teachers add or enact their own standards based on their cultural backgrounds, ideologies, the organizational structures they work in, and their personal and professional socialization (Varghese, 2008). Challenges to standards on teaching on its dualism between theory and practice, and reductionism into discrete elements (e.g., Sinnema, Meyer, & Aitken 2017), led to attempts to wholistic, integrative, inquiry-based, and interdisciplinary teaching approaches (e.g., Sinnema, Meyer, & Aitken 2017; Drake & Burns, 2004). Some standards have missing domains, and they are filled: an example is in Cyprus where there are no teacher standards that meets learners’ culture and needs, and the teachers met with school administrators and government officials to modify and add standards, and they are constantly evaluating and evaluating the standards (Alibab Erden & Ozer, 2013). Other challenges are that the standards do not change teacher beliefs and behavior and performances in classrooms (Abdel & Muhammad, 2012). Troia and Graham (2016) found that some teachers do not feel that some of the items in the US Common Core for writing and language standards are rigorous, do not reflect learners’ cultures and needs, are too numerous to cover, and/or omitted some key aspects of learning, and could not fit all learners. One study found that teachers’ perspectives on standards-based instructional practices, classroom management, and external testing do not have coherence and alignment, only that they are modestly correlated (Bonner, Torres Rivera, & Chen, 2018). Troia and Graham (2017) also found that teachers who have positive attitudes and beliefs in teaching tended to view the standards positively and were better prepared to teach (Troia & Graham, 2016). Different learners experience different aspects of the ACTFL’s 5C’s standards in the US. They focused on communication and community, and not much on cultures and comparisons and connections (Magnon, Murphy, & Sahakyan, 2014).
Standard development should be an ongoing process involving teachers, practitioners, and learners. They continually assess, reevaluate, and modify the standards based on learner and teacher outcomes in domain areas and the changing situation of the language and culture of signing deaf people. The standards should reflect the contemporaneous use of language and cultural practices in the signing deaf community under different social and cultural contexts.
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