The landscape of American Sign Language education

Abstract

The Challenge American Sign Language (ASL) education for L2/Ln students is growing so rapidly for the past few decades, but little is known about the landscape of ASL education as a field. What challenges does ASL education encounter? What direction does ASL education take? How does ASL education sustain itself?

American sign language level 1 assessment: What is out there?

“…Research on this topic is necessary because of the limited understanding of the experiences of Deaf instructors with subjugated identities in the field of ASL education. consistent with those challenges reported by several studies (Landa & Clark, 2019;Paludneviciene et al, 2012;Pirone et al, 2023;Quinto-Pozos, 2011;Rosen, 2010). Previous studies on ASL assessments have done little to investigate L2/Ln students in secondary and postsecondary or discuss classroom-based and formative assessments in ASL courses.…”

“…Given that they were unable to answer the question may reflect how much they know about ASL assessments. Research has reported that ASL instructors have insufficient training in language pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment (Pirone et al, 2023;Quinto-Pozos, 2011;Rosen, 2010).…”

“…For instance, several BIPOC participants in Pirone et al's (2023) study reported that they experienced cultural taxation because they always had to add pedagogical content on diversity since the ASL curricula they used lacked diversity. Moreover, several ASL curricula encouraged a prescriptive approach for teaching vocabulary and grammar, and, that is, counterproductive to diversity because teachers may criticize sign variations or dialects such as Black ASL (McCaskill et al, 2011;Pirone et al, 2023). Thus, the high number of White participants in this study is a limitation and a reflection of the predominance of Whiteness in the field of ASL teaching.…”

“…There are several factors that drive the growing interest in learning ASL. In the academic domain, the increasing number of secondary and postsecondary institutions have recognized and accepted ASL for academic purposes such as foreign language courses (Cooper et al, 2008(Cooper et al, , 2011Pirone et al, 2023;Rosen, 2008Rosen, , 2019. In the public domain, there is a growingly visible presence of ASL in mainstream media such as TV shows (e.g., Dancing with the Stars), films (e.g., the Oscar-winning film CODA), and news outlets.…”

“…As compared to other languages, ASL linguistics and by extension ASL education, is a relatively new field that emerged in the 1960s (McBurney, 2012;Pirone et al, 2023). Moreover, ASL is "under-researched and under-resourced" because of their "minoritized and marginalized status" (Börstell, 2023, p. 6).…”