Negotiating languages and modalities: Teaching in a deaf/hearing inclusive classroom

Abstract

In Singapore, students who are deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh), and who use sign language, used to attend special schools. Recently, however, d/hh (signing) students could attend mainstream primary school. This is a new development for the education of d/hh students who require the use of sign language in Singapore. This new phenomena should be looked at closely. It is especially crucial to look into how modality and languages are played out in the classroom. Narrative discourse analysis of one teacher’s talk revealed a crucial information gap due to missing visual representation, which may have contributed to students’ inaccurate math calculation. Although teachers may be aware of the need to present information visually to d/hh students, the analysis showed that teachers may be unaware of information gaps that arise in one modality and language, when multiple overlapping modalities and languages are used simultaneously. There is a need to help teachers use modality and language lenses to examine their classroom teaching. Future research using in-depth discourse analysis is needed to identify information presented and missing across various modalities and languages.