Transforming the Life Chances of Deaf Ugandan Youth Through Play

该项目研究乌干达聋哑儿童的具体生活世界，重点是通过手语习得发生的存在、社会性、自我反思和理解方面的根本转变，包括新的经验和表达模式、心理理论、反思和抽象思维，以及建立新的社会性、身份、社区和归属感。聋人通过残疾医学模型进行分类，该模型将耳聋定义为相对于听力人群的缺乏或损害（McIlroy 2005）。聋人青年经历语言习得延迟，并经常被排除在学习环境和相关的机会，因为许多教育方法的前景听力和言语。手语是体现和不可分割的性能，视觉，运动和物质，提供独特的视角来重新想象和批评传统的代表模式。通过批判主流社会文化中将耳聋视为残疾的观念，并通过发展基于聋人青年的具体、表演和视觉能力的共同创造实践，该项目调查：1）通过手语习得发生的存在转变，包括身份形成，知识，2）如何根据聋人的具体能力，（视觉和表演）可能揭示对聋人生活经验的新见解。3）如何发展在文化上适合聋人存在方式的教学方法，并认识到聋人青年的视觉和表演优势。4)编制课程，作为方法和产出，以调查和了解乌干达聋人青年的能力和社会技能，包括他们与听力社区的互动和融合。该项目倡导一种协作的、以儿童为中心的感觉民族志，借鉴乌干达聋人青年的具体理解和本体论优势，强调他们的潜力，并制定承认多种存在方式的替代教育方法。由此产生的人种学旨在具有跨学科的相关性，同时在教学法，政策和权利方面具有理论和实际应用。乌干达聋哑儿童的生活受到一种社会文化话语的影响，这种话语将耳聋视为kasiru（“愚蠢”、“无法学习”），尽管他们拥有同等的智力。大多数乌干达聋人第一次接触手语和其他聋人是在学校。值得注意的是，聋人学生是按照为听力正常人编制的课程授课的。手语与身体是密不可分的（拉德2003），通过“视觉-手动”符号来执行、体现和协商（鲍曼2008）。因此，通过将聋人沟通的表演基础、指导学习、游戏活动和视觉人种学相结合，该项目将开发一个以聋人为中心的实地工作环境，以研究和代表聋人青年的生活世界。以游戏为基础的讲习班利用电影、摄影和表演，并利用视觉能力，将为失聪青年提供一个包容性的、以儿童为中心的学习媒介。除了编写民族志外，这些讲习班的成果还将是根据聋人青年的经历和未来愿望制作的表演、摄影文章和电影，其内容将由儿童决定，这个项目将挑战聋人在教育中被看待的方式，通过证明他们能力的唯一限制是限制性的教育模式这并不能解释多种存在方式。这个项目要求我接受乌干达手语和卢甘达语（乌干达的国语）的困难语言培训。

This project researches the embodied lifeworlds of deaf Ugandan children, focussing on the radical transformations in being, sociality, self-reflexivity and understanding that occur through sign language acquisition, including new modes of experience and expression, theory-of-mind, reflexive and abstract thought, and establishing new senses of sociality, identity, community and belonging. Deaf persons are categorised through medical models of disability that define deafness as a lack or impairment relative to hearing populations (McIlroy 2005). Deaf youth experience delayed language acquisition and are routinely excluded from learning contexts and associated opportunities as many educational approaches foreground hearing and speech. Sign language is embodied and inseparable from performance, vision, movement and materiality, offering unique perspectives to reimagine and critique conventional modes of representation. By critiquing dominant socio-cultural perceptions of deafness as disablement, and by developing co-creative practices grounded in the embodied, performative and visual capacities of deaf youth, the project investigates: 1) The transformation in being that occurs through sign language acquisition, including identity formation, knowledge, learning and understanding.2) How child-centred practices based on the embodied capacities of deaf (visual and performative) might reveal new insights into the lived experience of deafness.3) How to develop pedagogical approaches that are culturally appropriate to deaf ways of being, and recognises the visual and performative strengths of deaf youth. 4) The development of a curriculum, as both method and output, to investigate and understand the capacities and social skills of deaf Ugandan youth, including their interaction and integration with the hearing community. This project advocates a collaborative, child-centred sensory ethnography that draws on the embodied understandings and ontological strengths of deaf Ugandan youth to emphasise their potential and develop alternative educational approaches that acknowledge multiple ways of being. The resulting ethnography aims to have interdisciplinary relevance, alongside theoretical and practical applications in terms of pedagogy, policy and rights. Deaf Ugandan children's lives are shaped by a sociocultural discourse which renders deafness as kasiru ('stupid', 'unable to learn'), despite possessing equal intelligence. Most deaf Ugandans first encounter sign language and other deaf persons at school. Significantly, deaf students are taught from a curriculum developed for hearing persons. Signed language is inseparable from the body (Ladd 2003), performed, embodied and negotiated through 'visual-manual' signs (Bauman 2008). Consequently, by combining deaf communication's performative foundations, guided learning, play activities and visual ethnography, the project will develop a deaf-centred fieldwork context to research and represent the lifeworlds of deaf youth. Play-based workshops that use film, photography and performance and draw on visual capacities will provide an inclusionary and child-centred learning medium for deaf youth. Alongside a written ethnography, outcomes of these workshops will be performances, photographic essays and films based on deaf youth's experiences and future aspirations, whose content will be shaped by the children, articulating their lived experience against wider sociocultural discursive framings.This project will challenge the way deaf people are viewed in education by demonstrating that the only limitation to their capability is a limiting educational model that does not account for multiple ways of being. This project requires me to undertake Difficult Language Training in Ugandan Sign Language and conversational Luganda (Uganda's national language).