Natural Signed Language Acquisition Within the Social Context of the Classroom

This chapter highlights some of the social and linguistic practices which have been observed in deaf parent/deaf child and hearing parent/deaf child family contexts. It then reviews what is known about classroom interactions in early childhood and elementary school contexts. Third, it discusses some practical considerations with respect to teachers emulating deaf caregiver-deaf child practices and considers some of the obstacles which may challenge this potential approach. Finally, taking together all of the research findings reviewed on caregiver-infant and teacher-student interaction, the chapter proposes a new conceptualization of an educator of the deaf whose primary focus would be to guide and promote, through everyday practice, the bilingual and bicultural identity development of deaf children using communication strategies modeled upon effective family engagement.