Michael E Skyer, PhD
Michael E. Skyer (PhD) works in deaf pedagogy and deaf curriculum research (basic/applied) strands with foci in technologies and methods of visuality and multimodality. His interests focus on the educative potential of art/design and the means and modes of harm reduction and beneficence enhancement in deaf education, special education, and disability studies. Skyer's (2021) dissertation is titled "Pupil ⇄ Pedagogue: Grounded Theories about Biosocial Interactions and Axiology for Deaf Educators."
Dr. Michael E. Skyer (PhD) was born in Rochester, NY (USA). He attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts, focusing on sculpture, drawing, and painting, with a minor in cultural studies, from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences (former CIAS, now CAD), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), with a GPA 3.84 (summa cum laude). Skyer then attained a Master of Science degree from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in the department of Secondary Education for Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (MSSE), with a GPA 3.98 (summa cum laude).
Skyer is a teacher-educator, teacher, and advocate, having worked in community-facing and public-school settings prior to matriculating in the PhD program in Teaching, Curriculum, and Change (TC3), at the University of Rochester (UR) in the Margaret Warner School of Education and Human Development (GPA 3.9).
In his pedagogic career, Skyer has mainly worked in deaf higher education. Through his doctoral studies, Skyer was a lecturer, of writing at the baccalaureate level and at the graduate school level, where he is currently employed as a teacher educator in a dual-accredited program of deaf and special education (MSSE). There, Skyer teaches a wide range of courses on the subjects of educational research, cultural and educational diversity, and language learning, among several other subjects.
Since 2018, Skyer has been the Book Review Editor for the American Annals of the Deaf (AAD), the oldest continually-operating scholarly journal of deaf studies in the United States. He is currently co-editing (with Peter H. Smagorinsky, PhD) a special issue of AAD focused on Vygotskian contributions to deaf pedagogy research. Since 2011, Skyer has been the recipient of $25.5K in grant monies. Member of the Golden Key Honor Society (since 2005), Skyer has won several awards, including in art (2003 Silver Key, Sculpture category, National Scholastic Award, in Arts and Writing), fiction writing (2019 Best Emerging Poets, Z Publishing Group) and pre-doctoral scholarship (RIT Presidential Scholarship, 2003-2009; RIT Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar Award, 2006). He is often nominated for awards in teaching excellence, including consecutive nominations for the RIT Provost's Award for Teaching with Technology (2017, 2018, 2019). Skyer was awarded the 2018 Irving K. Zola award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies (announced March 5, 2019), for research on the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2021, Skyer was featured, both online and in print, in Scientific American on the subject of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on technosocial pedagogies in deaf education, specifically about how American Sign Language (ASL) is affected by Zoom video conferencing software.
Supervisors: Dr. Patrick Graham and Drs. Kevin Meuwissen, Joanne Larson; Chris Kurz
Address: University of Tennessee, Knoxville
1126 Volunteer Blvd.
A204 Bailey Education Complex
Knoxville, TN 37996
Dr. Michael E. Skyer (PhD) was born in Rochester, NY (USA). He attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts, focusing on sculpture, drawing, and painting, with a minor in cultural studies, from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences (former CIAS, now CAD), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), with a GPA 3.84 (summa cum laude). Skyer then attained a Master of Science degree from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in the department of Secondary Education for Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (MSSE), with a GPA 3.98 (summa cum laude).
Skyer is a teacher-educator, teacher, and advocate, having worked in community-facing and public-school settings prior to matriculating in the PhD program in Teaching, Curriculum, and Change (TC3), at the University of Rochester (UR) in the Margaret Warner School of Education and Human Development (GPA 3.9).
In his pedagogic career, Skyer has mainly worked in deaf higher education. Through his doctoral studies, Skyer was a lecturer, of writing at the baccalaureate level and at the graduate school level, where he is currently employed as a teacher educator in a dual-accredited program of deaf and special education (MSSE). There, Skyer teaches a wide range of courses on the subjects of educational research, cultural and educational diversity, and language learning, among several other subjects.
Since 2018, Skyer has been the Book Review Editor for the American Annals of the Deaf (AAD), the oldest continually-operating scholarly journal of deaf studies in the United States. He is currently co-editing (with Peter H. Smagorinsky, PhD) a special issue of AAD focused on Vygotskian contributions to deaf pedagogy research. Since 2011, Skyer has been the recipient of $25.5K in grant monies. Member of the Golden Key Honor Society (since 2005), Skyer has won several awards, including in art (2003 Silver Key, Sculpture category, National Scholastic Award, in Arts and Writing), fiction writing (2019 Best Emerging Poets, Z Publishing Group) and pre-doctoral scholarship (RIT Presidential Scholarship, 2003-2009; RIT Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar Award, 2006). He is often nominated for awards in teaching excellence, including consecutive nominations for the RIT Provost's Award for Teaching with Technology (2017, 2018, 2019). Skyer was awarded the 2018 Irving K. Zola award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies (announced March 5, 2019), for research on the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2021, Skyer was featured, both online and in print, in Scientific American on the subject of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on technosocial pedagogies in deaf education, specifically about how American Sign Language (ASL) is affected by Zoom video conferencing software.
Supervisors: Dr. Patrick Graham and Drs. Kevin Meuwissen, Joanne Larson; Chris Kurz
Address: University of Tennessee, Knoxville
1126 Volunteer Blvd.
A204 Bailey Education Complex
Knoxville, TN 37996
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Conference Presentations by Michael E Skyer, PhD
This study synthesizes preliminary findings from a project underwritten by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). Alongside empirical analysis is an abductive review of the literature. The project is led by research professors who are deaf. While we reflect on our experiences, we highlight epistemic and experiential contributions from our deaf collaborators including: teachers, curriculum-designers, students, artists, and technology experts.
We explore an open-ended definition of deaf aesthetics in education with a mind to apply our working theory in digital environments of pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and learning. With refinements, our theoretical and methodological recommendations may aid deaf agents in several ecologies, including: students and faculty in deaf K-12 education, deaf higher education, and deaf adults/elders and professionals in community education, healthcare settings, and civic domains.
Goals:
• Our focused aim is to understand how deaf aesthetics affect educational interactions involving visual and multimodal resources constructed with digitally-networked computing technologies, including documents, apps, software, and hardware (“resources”).
• Our broader goals include: decreasing inaccessibility and disempowerment, and increasing accessibility and empowerment for all deaf agents who use these resources.
Findings:
• Deaf aesthetics describes stylistic and artistic choices that appeal to “deaf eyes.” While primarily visual, our inquiry is multimodal to account for ethics and heterogeneity in deaf demography (e.g., sensory and sociocultural diversity).
• Aesthetics and design modulate power and access in deaf education; however, this modulating force is not well understood in curriculum-design, pedagogy, and learning. While accessibility-gaps disempower deaf agents, accessible resources may empower deaf teachers and students.
Proposed Standards:
To resolve dilemmas, our synthesis culminates in proposed standards to be refined with future datasets and experimental resources intended to leverage the biosocial strengths of deaf people, including, cognition, embodiment, culture, and language, etc.
To this end, we organized six categories of variables where accessibility and power (via deaf educational aesthetics) are contingent on how resources are conceptualized, designed, and used:
1) multiple languages and multiple language modalities
(e.g., centralization of videos of sign languages, inclusion of clearly written text passages, and decisions about how/if oral languages are represented)
2) still imagery
(e.g., centralization and inclusion of static graphics, drawings, illustrations, shapes, and icons, and subcomponents like line, shape, color, including auxiliary modes like image descriptions)
4) kinetic imagery
(e.g., centralization and inclusion of mobile graphics, .gif files, videos, and other animations, including auxiliary modes like captions and described video texts)
3) format and layout
(e.g., centralization and inclusion of text-passage size and shape, use and arrangement of columns, bullets, lists, and spacing of texts, including the use of bleed lines, headlines and below-the-fold texts, as well as the deft use of negative [“white”] space)
5) font and typography
(e.g., centralization and inclusion of font size and shape, use and arrangement of headlines and body copy, spacing of texts, and inversion options [dark/light mode])
6) user-interface and interactivity
(e.g., centralization and inclusion of static, active, or dynamic user-interfaces, and unidirectional, bidirectional, or rhizomatic formats for participation).
The results from the elicitation studies will contribute to the development of deaf aesthetic guidelines for designing lessons, curricula and pedagogical activities. Deaf aesthetics will enable teachers of the deaf to empower students in the provision of learning materials that align with ocularcentricity, that is the preference for learning primarily through vision. The establishment of deaf aesthetic standards will also enable participants to evaluate available curricula and determine its suitability for their students. Finally, in digital environments, participants will be able to identify and develop optimal digital resources using the deaf aesthetics standards as a guide.
The covid pandemic incurred many unprecedented challenges in online learning and necessitated a critical examination of online learning for deaf students. For instance, current platforms such as Zoom allow for small frames featuring speakers and large frames for the presentation of powerpoints, screens, and learning objects. Most digital course material is presented in this manner with the speaker’s voice providing additional and vital information. This standard layout requires visual tracking between the sign language interpreter, text and image and may contribute to cognitive overload. Our literature review suggests that Universal Design for Learning falls short of what is needed for deaf students as they learn through digital applications. Our examination of current learning management systems, computer applications and available resources reveal an audiocentric bias. There is also the need for exchange of learning materials within an OER context, where learning materials and resources can be adapted according to deaf aesthetic standards. Applied deaf aesthetic principles aim to restore power, and agency to deaf students. Overall, we focus on how aesthetics are applied in deaf educational settings. We wish to construct an empirical basis for exploring the theoretical idea of “deaf aesthetics” in digital curriculum design.
In this presentation, we focus on the first phase of our three phase study. Phase 1 includes seven inaugural elicitation studies to examine which backgrounds, layouts, fonts, typographical choices, kinetic imagery, and language modes that our participants prefer. Our participants are young deaf adults (age 18+) in the United States and Canada. The results from this phase will be a (more or less) standardized set of guidelines for “deaf aesthetics.” In this presentation, we report on the preliminary results from the first four elicitation studies on preferred backgrounds, still imagery, format and layouts, font and typography.
Deaf aesthetics and its application to deaf education and pedagogy seeks to elevate all efforts in providing an equitable education for deaf learners. The application of deaf aesthetics to pedagogy and curriculum aims to increase accessibility and engagement within inclusive education environments. Deaf aesthetics seeks to empower students through the design and delivery of learning activities through ocularcentric as well as audiocentric biosocial channels. Deaf aesthetics has a pivotal role to play in increasing engagement through supporting culturally appropriate pedagogy because of its insistence on ocularcentricity as foundational to biosociality and its many diverse forms of deaf culture.
KRISTINA WILLICHEVA & DR. MICHAEL SKYER
THE DISABILITY JUSTICE FRAMEWORK
1. Intersectionality
2. Leadership of Those Most Impacted 3. Anti-Capitalism
4. Cross-Movement Solidarity
5. Wholeness
6. Sustainability
7. Cross-Disability Solidarity
8. Interdependence
9. Collective Access
10. Collective Liberation
COMMUNITY
Focus: Engaging with the community to learn, advocate, affirm, and foster connections
1.Community panels 2.Deaf advocacy
3.Visual language modeling 4.Connections with Deaf
schools and programs 5.Partnerships with influential
Deaf community members 6.Mentoring initiative
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE
Synthesizing and actualizing Lev Vygotsky's principles through multilingualism and multimodality
Vygotsky firmly believed that:
Deaf, DeafBlind, and Disabled ways of being are a part of natural human diversity, especially in a pluralistic lens.
Signed languages are crucial cognitive foundations. Flexibility promotes inclusion.
Teachers have an ethical responsibility to implement multilingual and multimodal instruction, reject linguistic hierarchies, and embrace neurodiversity.
The direct-action imperative is the root of liberation.
VYGOTSKIAN PRINCIPLES INTERTWINED WITH DISABILITY JUSTICE
1. Focusing on intact cognitive capabilities rather than deficits.
2. Recognizing that early sign access empowers and enables development
and how it is rooted in justice.
3. Perceiving deafness as a dynamic, contingent way of being,
that it is simply a sensory configuration.
4. Criticizing systemic ableism and audism that constrains deaf lives.
5. Calling for deaf education to be led by those with lived expertise.
6. Embracing multimodal, pluralistic approaches to language and learning.
MEDICAL
Focus: Building a crossover between medical and teaching spheres to advance change to disrupt the system
1.Conversations with professionals 2.Roleplaying with families about
choices
3.Advocacy work toward medical
school curricula
4.Onsite visits with clinics 5.Communicating options without
ableist lens
6.Relationships with medical leaders
EDUCATION
Focus: Having future teachers analyze barriers & codify accessible practices ranging from physical to linguistic realms
1.Readings from Disability Studies in education
2.Universal Design for Learning 3.Advocacy work as a hearing person 4.Community members as co-
instructors
5.Videos of disability rights activism 6.Nonviolent community
accountability practices
SELECT REFERENCES
Berne, Patty and Sins Invalid. (2015). 10 Principles of Disability Justice. Retrieved from sinsinvalid.org. Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The Fundamentals of Defectology.
Willicheva, K., & Hall, W. C. (2023). From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles: Vygotskian-Inspired Conclusions for Biomedicine and Deaf Education. American Annals of the Deaf (Washington, D.C. 1886), 168(1), 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2023.a904171
Examining Deaf Pedagogy in Sociohistorical Contexts.
Michael E. Skyer
In Fundamentals of Defectology, Vygotsky (1993) succinctly argues: “There is not a single instance where the biological can be separated from the social” (p. 92). Although Defectology discretely examines social, biological, psychological, and methodological categories, its core argument is that none exist in isolation; instead, they flow as complex interactions, which produce traceable cultural histories. In kind, defectology, pedology, and pedagogy result from biological and social dimensions of human experiences coming into contact and generating syntheses that transcend their parts.
Given Vygotsky’s polymathic genius, it’s worth examining his biosocial claims about human developmental potential. I delimit my scope to critical disability and deaf education studies (e.g., defectology), and focus on understanding how the evolving science of deaf pedagogy is catalyzed by sociohistorical forces (e.g., power and self-determination) and axiology (e.g., ethics and aesthetics). For Vygotsky, deaf pedagogy works toward the sublation of deafness. Researchers and teachers must holistically examine the interactions and dialectics that flow together as sociocultural, psychological, discursive, developmental, and educational sub-processes. Research about deaf pedagogy, therefore, rests on biosocial foundations, where deafness is situated in and constructed by conflicts of culture, history, and socio-politics, including structural dilemmas and methodological dissensus.
Reference:
Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: The fundamentals of defectology (abnormal psychology and learning disabilities) (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Plenium Press.
2. Theoretical Framework:
a. My research began with an interest in visual pedagogy theory and methods (Rose, 2012) as a means to resolve problems in deaf education, including inexplicit teaching theories (Swanwick & Marschark 2010). As the study developed, I drew on theories of multimodality (Hodges & Kress, 1998; Kress, 2010), the aesthetics of educational change (Cherryholmes, 1999), and the ethics of deaf education (Christensen, 2010). My study used deaf axiology (Skyer, 2021) to synthesize a set of novel theories about visual and multimodal pedagogy in deaf education. Empirical demonstrations of theoretical ideas, which prior research (Kusters, et al., 2017) lacked, were interpreted through a conceptual framework about dissensus and conflict (Rancière, 2010) in pedagogic contexts (Kress, 2010).
3. Methodological Overview:
a. I examined pedagogical praxis in a collective (qualitative) case-study involving six deaf educators who are themselves also deaf. I called the group “deaf faculty.” They represent the diversity of both the research site and the wider deaf student population. Evidence gathered from each of the six cases formed the basis for several grounded theories, built atop a large corpus (1.38 terabytes) of multimodal data. It was analyzed using abductive reasoning, analytic memos, and multimodal coding procedures (via MAXQDA software). Data included video and images from authentic observations of teaching, in-depth interviews, and stimulated recall (sessions where participants co-analyzed selections of their data as prompts).
4. Key Findings:
a. I found that multimodal transduction (MT) occurred in nearly all teaching and learning interactions in deaf education. I present evidence showing that when deaf faculty apply MT in teaching, deaf students emulate the process and MT reappears in their learning products. The mechanism by which MT works is also its purpose—to change knowledge forms without substantially changing its content (Kress, 2010). The etymology of transduction shows movement across or through two stages, using the same underlying logic as scientific and poetic metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Sfard, 1998).
b. MT is and requires a change from one mode or set (e.g., mode ensembles or assemblages of modes) into another. While this can use language at either the starting, intermediate, or ending stages, MT is not limited to language (c.f., Swanwick, 2017). When deaf faculty used MT in these case studies, it usually resulted in increased visuality; however, on the whole, MT is multimodal in character (Kusters, et al., 2017; Tapio, 2013).
c. Deaf faculty often change knowledge to be more accessible for deaf learners, knowledge is thus, made more ethical by virtue of its increasing focus on visual and multimodal aesthetic properties. Deaf students and faculty used MT for particular purposes across a myriad of interactions, most of which centered on increasing access, enhancing interactivity, but also for the sheer aesthetic joy of change.
d. MT is an “umbrella” encapsulating a broader range of related changes to other discourse forms (See: Illustration 1, below). Furthermore, in the course of the study, I found it useful to disambiguate MT with similar concepts such as: translanguaging, code switching and “chaining” (Humphries & McDougall, 2000). Throughout, I use qualitative data to ground, explain, and clarify claims
a. MT is equally important in teaching as in learning. MT is widely and creatively used, owing to its flexibility and adaptivity. MT uses but extends beyond language. It is useful for all deaf students, regardless of cooccurring disabilities or language dysfluency. In sum, MT is an interactionary epistemic-ontological conjunction where the form of knowledge changes, and with it, new realities are manifested for deaf agents. In this, the aesthetic is a signpost to meaning-making.
The aim of the workshop is to identify and interrupt problems in deaf education which have long frustrated its transformation. Each of the three sessions will be led by Skyer, consisting of a multimodal presentation of instructional materials (Lecture), with identified focus areas (Questions), and educational objective. Sessions will require interactive participation by the audience, grouped in one of several Learning Pods. Each Learning Pods will consist of ~5 MU-MA/Deaf Ed. students, ~2 MU Faculty, and ~10 deaf community members. Participants will use Lecture materials and Questions to explore and apply concepts in novel contexts. In doing so, pods will create artifacts and generate discussions (documented via video technologies) that will constitute evidence of learning. Following the three sessions, MU Faculty facilitators will facilitate a closing discussion using a Roundtable format.
Attendees will leave the workshop with a better understanding of:
Session 1: The Curious Case of Vygotsky in Soviet Russia: History, Theory, Deaf Pedagogies
Session 2: Phonocentrism and Ocularcentrism: A Tale of Two Contrasting Discourse Ideologies
Session 3: Transformation and Deaf Multimodal-Visual Pedagogy: Evidence from the Field
Session 4: Theory and Strategy for Deaf Education in 2021 and Beyond: A Roundtable
Educational Objectives (List specific measurable actions by participants that will demonstrate comprehension and integration of information presented):
1) identify and describe common issues related to mentoring in deaf education
2) understand how diversity and identity affect mentoring in deaf education
3) determine best practices for mentoring in deaf education
4) propose questions about mentoring in deaf education
Media/Materials (List the print, audio and visual materials you will use. Who is responsible for providing them?)
One PPT presentation (in development) will contain the following:
1) Brief literature review on mentoring in deaf education
2) Survey data analysis demonstrating the importance of mentoring in deaf education for early-career educators
3) Questions (5-10) posed to early career teachers (3-4) by the discussant (Skyer).
4) Questions (3-4) posed to early career teachers by audience participants
Institutions: 1) Senior Lecturer in the Master of Science in Secondary Education (MSSE) for Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing Department, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY; and 2) PhD Candidate in the Teaching, Curriculum, and Change Program (T&C) at the Margret Warner School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, Rochester NY
Abstract:
Value conflicts surrounding axiology (ethics and aesthetics) in deaf education include longstanding disagreements about deafness in terms of the senses, cognition, language, and power. This analysis centralizes the role of vision, a historically undertheorized domain of deaf pedagogy. Axiological conflicts about vision and deaf education result in a lack of empirical research and a dearth of productive theory about teaching. The lack of theory about vision in deaf pedagogy stymies scholarly progress for researchers and educators who seek to transform the field. Likewise, it exacerbates already-complex problems related to deaf students’ learning and contributes to harm being done to deaf children in schools.
Dissensus—a lack of agreement in theories on deafness—obscures educational research which connect the aforementioned threads; however, dissensus also engenders a new philosophical orientation that productively examines conflicts in deaf education theory. The field of deaf education desperately needs empirically-grounded theories about how and why deaf educators teach using visual discourses, visual tools, and visual modes of communication, described here in sum as deaf visual pedagogy. This research synthesis establishes the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological groundwork necessary for a comprehensive comparative analysis across four paradigms of deaf education research.
Methodological considerations for feasibility (in terms of teaching and research) are linked to deaf research via discussions of deaf epistemologies, deaf ontologies, and through the introduction of deaf axiology. To examine the ethics and aesthetics of the visual in deaf education is to productively critique structural and affective dimensions of valuation in deaf pedagogy. Yet critique alone is insufficient. Thus, this ongoing project rejects deaf education’s traditional reactive stance to developments of theory and welcome a proactive and decidedly deaf-centric paradigm shift. The establishment of the biosocial paradigm is future-oriented and explicitly confronts contested issues of pedagogy including embodiment in pedagogical interactions and ocularcentricity in biopower.
This paper contextualizes multimodality theory in digital-epistemological paradigms and analyzes their combined effects upon operations of power in deaf pedagogical practices, including how knowledge is created and shared by deaf people using digital technologies and pedagogical practices derived thereof. This investigation examines how technosocial tools are embedded in a nexus of historical, social, political, and educational changes—at key times, deaf people effectuate change with celerity. This paper argues that theoretical deaf research is clarified by multimodality; likewise, multimodality benefits by considering deaf ontologies/epistemologies. Converging domains illuminate the dynamism and synergy of technosocial changes in history, and contributes to literatures on the history of technology by documenting complex, interdependent relationships between digital knowledge modalities and the deaf users who drive their development.
Researchers and pedagogues invested in deaf education are divided by conflicts of value. Axiological differences result in "a nearly insurmountable gap between researchers and practitioners" (Easterbrooks, 2017, p. 25 in Cawthon & Garberoglio, 2017). This presentation offers a critical synthesis of the literature on deaf education pedagogy research and focuses on synthesizing issues related to visual discourses and phenomena in teaching practice. Themes emerging from the study evince crucial ruptures in the values, ethics, and aesthetics of deaf research which preclude progress. Conflicts arise from diverse professional orientations, disciplinary foci, and paradigmatic variations but are united by the common problems of teaching deaf students and the promising potentiality of deaf-centric research on visual pedagogy.
In the early 1900s, Vygotsky described deaf pedagogy as unsystematic and implored change. One hundred years later, Swanwick and Marschark (2010) call our work unsuccessful. Dissensus is manifest in theory’s obstruction; however, dissensus gives clarity relative to the agonistic problems of axiology—the ethics and aesthetics of power in deaf education. Deaf educational theorists need to develop ways to decipher the how and why of deaf visual pedagogy (Cawthon & Garberglio, 2017; p. ix). Deaf social theory enhances how researchers understand vision in learning; however, in spite of advancement, deaf pedagogy theory is underdeveloped (Lang, et al. 1993; Thoutenhoofd, 2010). By synthesizing the following concepts (deaf axiology, the biosocial paradigm, deaf visual pedagogy) I address the following problems: There is no contemporary theory to describe the unified deaf biosocial ecology, no extant theory to productively analyze conflict on vision, or foreground axiology in decisionmaking, or centralize vision as a strategy to transform power (Bauman & Murray, 2014; BealAlvarez, 2017; Fernandes & Myers, 2010; Friedner 2010). There is no systematic theory, no standard toolkit of analytic techniques, or generalized empirical approach. Cawthon and Garberoglio (2017) summarize: “without an adequate research base, there cannot be effective practice. Without an understanding of the needs in deaf education, there cannot be research that supports effective practice." (p. xii).
This proposal directly works toward the year's theme: "Connecting the Dots." The project focuses on clarifying the issues that disconnect researchers from teachers and from deaf individuals and society more broadly. Introducing the concept of "Deaf Axiology" "Deaf visual pedagogy" and "the biosocial paradigm of deaf research" to the established corpus of deafcentric philosophy on teaching (e.g. deaf epistemology and deaf ontology, deaf gains in research on teaching) allows for the development of new critical lexicon to productively address and resolve longstanding conflicts of our field. The ultimate goals of the project include opening trans-disciplinary conversations among stakeholders and enhancing the practices of deaf education teacher-educators.
This study is primarily based on a critical literature review which preceded a two-year multi-method (grounded theory and case study) qualitative study (which is in progress at present).
This study is based on three years worth of in-depth qualitative interviews with deaf college students regarding their learning processes, language acquisition strategies, and attitudes necessary for success in composition/rhetoric/academic writing. Data are sourced from student-produced personal reflections (in ASL and English) following a 1-semester course in college composition. This study employs the theoretical lenses of Deaf Gain (Bauman and Murray, 2014; 2013) and social multimodality (Kress, 2010) to clarify its claims. This study relies on qualitative methodologies, including discourse analysis (Gee, 2014) and autoethnography (Denizen, 2014) to synthesize emergent themes from multiple cohorts of deaf adolescent youth becoming acculturated to academic prose. The findings from this inductive analysis are then mapped out and applied to K-12 education in a variety of settings.
Considerations and themes emphasize the use of social and interactive methods for learning and highlight the importance of using digitally mediated, multimodal tools to teach academic rhetoric. The study also notes the importance of facilitating motivation in student learning, and the overarching need for devising and curating visual strategies for teaching deaf students working in sign, speech, print, and other visual media. Additional themes include the complex nature of identity development in the writing process and note the importance of intersectionality with regard to deafness, disability, language, and culture. Finally, implications for using the above themes as vectors for teaching and learning in K-12 settings are discussed. This exploratory study reiterates the need for educators to engage in authentic dialogue with students throughout the educational process and indicates that multimodal communication frameworks are ethically, theoretically, and empirically sound approaches to deaf literacy development at all stages of deaf education.