In this conceptual article, the authors introduce the Translanguaging Framework for Deaf Education (TFDE), drawing upon two perspectives on language and learning: crip linguistics and critical translanguaging space. The TFDE is a retheorization of the Language Zone, a pedagogical framework for supporting language learning in deaf education, and is designed to support educators to approach language use and users from an asset-oriented perspective. In line with this stance, the TFDE validates the linguistic resources deaf students bring to the classroom and encourages students’ full use of their communicative repertoires for meaning making, while also working to expand their linguistic resources and increase communicative flexibility. Examples of translanguaging pedagogical practices with deaf students, such as coming to a shared understanding, building metalinguistic knowledge, and honing communication for external audiences, are explained and illustrated through classroom scenarios with deaf students. Readers are also provided with tools for critically analyzing the social context to ensure accessible and equitable language environments for deaf students and to protect spaces for the use of minoritized languages such as ASL.

Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) involves teaching cognitive writing strategies and apprenticing novices within collaborative writing communities. It is responsive to deaf students' diverse language experiences through embedded metalinguistic/linguistic components. A randomized controlled trial of SIWI was conducted with 15 teachers and 79 students in grades 3-5. Recount, information report, and persuasive genres were taught across three 9-week periods. Writing samples analyzed for writing traits, language clarity, and language complexity were collected prior to instruction for the genre, immediately following, and 9 weeks after withdrawal of instruction for the genre. Standardized writing measures and motivation surveys were collected at the beginning and end of the academic year. Genre-specific writing outcomes were statistically significant for recount and information report writing, with substantial effect sizes for treatment and maintenance. Standardized writing outcomes mirrored these results. All others variables demonstrated small to moderately large treatment effects, although not all statistically significant.

This study explores the impact of Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) on six students’ written language skills through the application of a multiple-baseline probe single case design with embedded condition. This was part of a larger Institute of Education Sciences (IES)-funded project focused on the development and feasibility of implementation of SIWI. For the majority of skills analyzed, there were improvements in the mean level of performance with the implementation of SIWI, as well as more consistent responding and positive trends in the data. The study also revealed that teachers are in need of additional tools to aid the systematic identification and tracking of syntax skills in children’s written language development, and to distinguish these from other writing skills such as conventions or handwriting.

This study critically examines the biases and methodological shortcomings in studies comparing deaf and hearing populations, demonstrating their implications for both the reliability and ethics of research in deaf education. Upon reviewing the 20 most-cited deaf-hearing comparison studies, we identified recurring fallacies such as the presumption of hearing ideological biases, the use of heterogeneously small samples, and the misinterpretation of critical variables. Our research reveals a propensity to biased conclusions based on the norms of white, hearing, monolingual English speakers. This dependence upholds eugenics ideas and scientific ableism, which reinforces current power dynamics that marginalize the epistemologies and lived experiences of deaf populations. Going forward, it will be imperative for deaf people to be included in meaningful roles in deaf-related research as active contributors who help define the whole research process. Without this shift, the research risks remaining detached from the very populations it seeks to understand.

With the knowledge that deaf children benefit from early exposure to signed language, questions are raised about the role of specific types of language input that are beneficial in early childhood classrooms. This quasi-experimental study explores the effects of ASL rhyme, rhythm, and handshape awareness activities on 4- to 6-year-old deaf children’s ASL phonological awareness. Deaf children received three-week structured activities and four-week teacher-choice activities that targeted handshape awareness. Results yielded evidence that interventions as brief as 12 minutes daily for up to 2 months can produce positive effects on deaf children’s phonological awareness. Furthermore, although the intervention focused only on handshape awareness, children’s positive gains on the ASL Phonological Awareness Test suggests one targeted phonological awareness skill (e.g., handshape) may generalize to other phonological awareness skills (e.g., location and movement). Further investigation is needed on the relationship between ASL phonological awareness and overall language and literacy skills in both ASL and English.

This study explores the intertwined phenomena of language deprivation, emergent writing, and translanguaging in deaf students without additional disabilities in grades 3–6. A case study was conducted using deductive and inductive approaches to analyze 42 writing samples. There were four areas of focus: (1) stages of emergent writing development, (2) writing change over time, (3) emerging writing and translanguaging features, and (4) writing features unique to the context of language deprivation. First, pre-writing samples add to evidence that older deaf students undergo similar developmental processes with their emergent writing patterns. Second, an analysis of pre- and post-writing samples indicated that movement between stages occurred for most students. Third, students incorporated emergent writing and translanguaging features that reflected the application of their linguistic resources in writing. Finally, existing theories were extended by uncovering writing characteristics unique to the context of language deprivation. Incomplete ideation and restricted translanguaging practices were identified as attributions of language deprivation impacting cognitive and linguistic resources. This study provides evidence that deaf students as old as thirteen years old are developing emergent writing skills not because of their deafness but likely because they were in environments that produced chronic inadequate language access.