Ingela Holmström

Language, Identity and Technologies in Classrooms for the Differently-Abled

This paper reports upon some of the overarching findings from project CIT (www.oru.se/project/cit) at the CCD research network based environment in Sweden. It highlights the ways in which individua ...

Resources for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in mainstream schools in Sweden : A survey

ABSTRACT Although once placed solely in deaf schools, a growing number of deaf students in Sweden are now enrolling in mainstream schools. In order to maintain a functional educational environment for these students, municipalities are required to provide a variety of supporting resources, e.g. technological equipment and specialized personnel. However, the functions of these resources and how these relate to deaf students’ learning is currently unknown. Thus, the present study examines public school resources, including the function of a profession called a hörselpedagog (HP, a kind of pedagogue that is responsible for hard-of-hearing students). In particular, the HPs’ perspectives on the functioning and learning of deaf students in public schools were examined. Data were collected via (i) two questionnaires: one quantitative (n = 290) and one qualitative (n = 26), and (ii) in-depth interviews (n = 9). These show that the resources provided to deaf children and their efficacy are highly varied across the country, which holds implications for the language situations and learning of deaf students.

Deaf lecturers’ translanguaging in a higher education setting. A multimodal multilingual perspective

Abstract In a few universities around the world courses are offered where the primary language of instruction is a national sign language. Many of these courses are given by bilingual/multilingual deaf lecturers, skilled in both national sign language(s) and spoken/written language(s). Research on such deaf-led practices in higher education are lacking, and this study will contribute to a greater understanding of these practices. Drawing on ethnographically created data from a higher education setting in Sweden, this case study examines the use of different languages and modalities by three deaf lecturers when teaching deaf and hearing (signing) students in theoretic subjects. The analysis is based on video-recordings of the deaf lecturers during classroom activities at a basic university level in which Swedish Sign Language (SSL) is used as the primary language. The results illustrate how these deaf lecturers creatively use diverse semiotic resources in several modes when teaching deaf and hearing (signing) students, which creates practices of translanguaging. This is illustrated by classroom activities in which the deaf lecturers use different language and modal varieties, including sign languages SSL and ASL as well as Swedish, and English, along with PowerPoint and whiteboard notes. The characteristics of these multimodal-multilingual resources and the usage of them will be closely presented in this article.