Instructional Practices for Signed Literacy: Observations of 38 Deaf Education Classrooms

Abstract

This mixed-methods study examined how signed literacy instruction is currently taught in United States deaf education classrooms (PreK-3) and to what extent that instruction reflects evidence-based composing instruction. Signed literacy instruction means teaching students to view, analyze, and compose texts in a signed language. A composing-forward approach treats students’ production of signed texts as the central instructional activity, with language skills taught in service of that composition. This approach is the core of Strategic and Interactive Signing Instruction (SISI), a pedagogical framework for signed literacy. Participants were 38 teachers across 11 deaf education programs. Each teacher completed a survey on their instructional practices and was observed teaching lessons selected to demonstrate support for deaf children’s signing skills. Survey and observation data were analyzed separately, then compared for agreement, complementarity, and divergence. Nine of 38 teachers included signed composition in their observed instruction. Of those 9, only 6 (16% of the full sample) met the evidence-based composing instruction threshold. These 6 teachers consistently treated signed language as the instructional target and embedded strategy, interactive, and language instruction within a composing cycle. The remaining teachers taught isolated grammatical features in signed language or used signed language to scaffold print literacy. Findings suggest that signed composition appears in a minority of classrooms, and that even when it appears, it is not consistently taught with the instructional features evidence suggests it requires.