Deafness from a Sociocultural Perspective: The Results of an Ethnographic
Study Conducted in an American Sign Language Immersion Environment
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La Vonne Cornell-Swanson
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Dept. of Social Work
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University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
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Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004
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(715) 838-5365
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lavonne@jvlnet.com
The deaf population is not homogeneous, and the social and educational
needs of deaf children are influenced by a variety of hereditary, environmental,
and sociocultural factors. As a result hearing parents of deaf children
must look to early intervention programs and the schools, including their
child’s teachers and peers to provide language and cultural modeling.
This research is an ethnographic study conducted for twelve months in an
ASL immersion classroom located in a bilingual/bicultural, residential
school for deaf students. The study sample included eleven deaf students
in a kindergarten-first grade classroom, two teachers and the administrative
staff at the residential school. It examined how this particular
group of deaf students inductively learned and developed communicative
competence in a school environment designed to take advantage of the deaf
student’s strengths. The conceptual lens used to analyze the data
was drawn from the sociocultural model of deafness, from Ladson-Billings’
(1994) theory on culturally relevant pedagogy, and the ecological model
of social work practice. The results of the study supported the hypotheses
that (a) the transmission of culture occurs in a classroom for deaf students
through socialization practices unique to visual pedagogy, and (b) deaf
student’s strengths are based on the concept that vision is the central
organizing principle in the lives of deaf people (Erting, 1994; Blackburn,
2000). The implications of this study can be applied to social work policy
and practice in the areas of disability studies, early intervention programming,
immersion schooling, and strengths based social work practice.