The field of sign language pedagogy

2.3.2.1 Initial scholarly work: pursuing recognition

Teaching sign languages as a second language is a relatively recent phenomenon, which has developed since the 1970s (Newell, 1994).¹⁸.The inception of the profession is closely intertwined with the scholarly and social recognition of deaf communities and their sign languages (see Section 2.2.3).

Deaf people became aware of the value of their languages and started to teach hearing parents, professionals and hearing people who were generally interested to learn the language. The first Teacher resource text on grammar and culture and the companion Teacher resource text on curriculum, methods, and evaluation appeared in 1980 in the United States (Baker-Schenk & Cokely, 1980a, 1980b). These publications drew upon available linguistic research on ASL and on theories and methods developed in the field of second language teaching combined with the authors’ own experiences.

The following two decades can be characterized as a period of ‘anchoring the profession’. Scholarly publications seeked to establish sign language teaching as a profession in its own right. These articles – all on teaching ASL – centered around three themes: (i) language status and recognition of ASL as a ‘foreign language’ (e.g., Chapin, 1988; Wilcox, 1988; Jacobs, 1996; Wilcox & Wilcox, 1997; for a comprehensive overview, see Rosen, 2008), which is equally difficult to learn as other (spoken) languages (Kemp 1998a); (ii) description of linguistic and affective factors that are (or might be) obstacles in the learning process (Kemp, 1998b; McKee & McKee, 1992); and (iii) identification of teacher qualifications (Kanda & Fleischer, 1988; Newell, 1995a; Newell, 1995b) and curriculum design (Smith, 1988; Wilcox & Wilcox, 1997).

Notably, these early works emphasized the application of second language methods and approaches in sign language teaching, without questioning whether these approaches would be appropriate to teach visual-spatial languages. A second observation is that these works do not mention the possible (positive or negative) influence of existing gestural repertoires

18 Notably, the literature reviewing sign language pedagogy reports on developments in ‘the global North’ (United States, Canada, Europe) and Australia.

Little is known about practices in other countries, due to a lack of literature.

in the learning process. Thirdly, these studies emphasized the socio-cultural differences between the deaf community and the ‘hearing world’ and the problems that may result from these differences (Kemp, 1998b; Wilcox &

Wilcox, 1997). These characteristics mirror the socio-cultural forces that were at play during that period (i.e., recognition of the deaf community as a cultural group) and the focus of linguistic studies, which in an effort to demonstrate that sign languages were fully-fledged languages, largely ignored the relationship between signs and gesture (see McBurney, 2012 for a historical overview of the field of sign language linguistics).

2.3.2.2 Expansion of the research area

After the first wave of publications in the 1980s and 1990s, a decade of low scholarly output followed. Although still ASL-dominated, the field slowly expanded with publications on teaching and learning other sign languages, such as Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (Napier, Leigh & Nann, 2007) and British Sign Language (BSL) (e.g., Mertzani, 2007). The post-2000 publications no longer attempted to prove the value of teaching and learning sign languages, but focused on materials (Napier et al., 2007, Mertzani, 2007), good practices (Schornstein, 2005), or efficiency of methods (Buisson, 2007) instead.

2.3.2.3 Establishing a research field

The last decade has seen a rapid progression of the field. The transition into a more mature field is reflected in the publication of dedicated edited volumes (McKee, Rosen & McKee, 2014; Rosen, 2019b), chapters in general handbooks and encyclopedia on language learning and linguistics (Woll, 2013; Mann, Haug, Kollien & Quinto-Pozos, 2014; Chen Pichler &

Koulidoubrova, 2015), an increasing number of journal articles, and numerous conference talks on SL2-learning and teaching at conferences dedicated to sign languages and second language learning, such as keynote presentations on sign language teaching delivered by Jordan Fenlon at TISLR (Fenlon, 2019) and by Krister Schönström at EuroSLA (Schönström, 2019).¹⁹ Published articles cover a range of topics, such as learning opportunities

19 TISLR is the International Conference on Theroretical Issues in Sign Language Research; EuroSLA is the Conference of the European Second Language Assocation.

outside the classroom (Rosen, 2014; Willoughby & Sell, 2019), errors and teacher feedback (Willoughby, Linder, Ellis & Fisher, 2015), curriculum evaluations (Swaney & Smith, 2017 on ASL curricula), alignment of sign language courses with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Snoddon, 2015), computer-assisted language learning (CALL) (Mertzani, 2011 on BSL; Alexander, Vale & McKee, 2017 on New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL)), language of instruction (Holmström, 2019), individual learner characteristics (Allbutt & Ling, 2016), integrating Deaf culture in the teaching of sign languge (Clark & Lee, 2018), translanguaging and prescriptivism (Snoddon, 2017, 2018), and sign language as a third language (Rosen, 2018). A number of studies report on the acquisition of phonological parameters (Bochner, Christie, Hauser & Searls, 2011; Ortega &

Morgan, 2015b; Beal & Faniel, 2018). A positive and much needed development is that an increasing number of studies report empirical evidence on SL2 acquisition processes of a variety of grammatical phenomena, including constructed action (Kurz, Mullaney & Occhino, 2019), use of eye gaze while producing spatial descriptions (Ferrara, 2019), use of Whole Entity classifier predicates in spatial descriptions (Marshall & Morgan, 2015; Ferrara & Nilsson, 2017), and reference tracking in narratives (Bel, Ortells & Morgan, 2015; Frederiksen & Mayberry, 2019).

In the European context, two successive projects organized by the European Centre of Modern Languages, PRO-sign I (2012–2015) and PRO sign II (2016–2019), have resulted in the inclusion of sign language proficiency levels in the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2018, in preparation), the publication of the level-specific descriptors in International Sign as well as in written English (ProSign, 2016), a list of teacher competences (ProSign, 2019), a European Language Portfolio for sign languages (ProSign, in preparation), and an assessment guide (ProSign, in preparation). These projects, which included network meetings, workshops and conferences, have pushed the field forward. A second European project, SignTeach, has created opportunities for exchange and has resulted in a website with good practices and resources (Pyfers, 2017).²⁰ A third development of importance is the

20 www.signteach.eu.

establishment of a European Network for Sign Language Teachers (ENSLT), another opportunity for professionalization and exchange.²¹