Peer to Peer Deaf Multiliteracies: research into a sustainable approach to education of Deaf children and young adults in the Global South

在发展中世界，聋哑儿童和青壮年被排除在学校系统之外，导致个人和社区得不到优质教育；这不仅导致失业、就业不足、低收入和高贫困风险，而且也是对人类才华和潜力的不必要浪费。为解决这一问题，该项目扩大了在一个试点项目下开展的工作，该项目旨在解决全球南方年轻聋人的扫盲教育问题。创建、实施和评估我们的创新干预措施，通过基于手语的辅导、日常生活中的文本(如工作申请表)和定制的在线资源的使用，建立、实施和评估基于同伴教学的英语识字能力，使我们能够产生一种可持续的、具有成本效益的、以学习者为导向的方式，以促进聋人的识字学习。为了接触到更多的目标群体并进行更深入的研究，本项目将我们的工作扩展到印度、乌干达、加纳、卢旺达和尼泊尔的新的学习群体，包括小学(印度、加纳和乌干达约60名儿童)和青年学习者(干预中约100名学习者，以及尼泊尔和卢旺达的范围界定讲习班中约60名年轻人)。在目标国家，边缘化从学校开始，因为许多学校没有通过手语进行教学的资源，尽管手语是聋哑儿童唯一完全可以接触到的语言。该项目旨在研究我们如何通过让聋人参与设计新的教学方法，并利用儿童和年轻人的日常经验和现有识字实践作为他们学习的基础，来改变促成这一趋势的一些因素。参加这一方案的人不仅要提高英语读写能力，还能培养“多识字能力”，即手语、技术、书面英语、手势、口音和其他形式的多模式交流的技能。开发多语种工具包是多语言能力的基本要素。在现代社会中，“识字”包括一系列复杂的实践和能力，以及与各种模式(如面对面、数字、远程)的接触，从而提高一个人独立行动的能力。我们强调积极学习，结合具体情况进行评估，并建立档案袋以记录进展情况，这将增加聋人学习者在持续的教育和就业能力方面的好处。除了实际的教学和干预外，研究还调查了现有的聋人学习者教育制度中的因素，以及这些因素如何可能系统性地破坏和孤立聋人社区及其手语。我们的分析将确定我们的方案和未来倡议需要处理和评估的文化背景的当地动态，以使其可持续。我们在试点中遇到的一个挑战是缺乏训练有素的聋人同伴辅导老师。需要对地方能力建设进行投资，并为聋人获得正式资格创造机会和途径。因此，至少有四名聋人项目工作人员将在我们在印度的合作机构参加应用语言学/TESOL的硕士课程。我们将为所有聋人项目工作人员开展识字教学和研究方法方面的培训。我们还将开发和调整适当的评估工具和指标，以确定儿童和年轻人进行了什么学习以及如何学习。这包括为年轻的成年聋人学习者采用《欧洲语言共同参考框架》(CEFR)，为聋儿采用‘语言阶梯’，以便我们使用当地有效的测试标准。为了更详细地记录进展情况，并与真实、真实的扫盲要求相关，我们需要创建自己的衡量标准，我们将通过使用以学习者为中心并与当地课程密切相关的基于档案袋的评估来做到这一点。

The exclusion of deaf children and young adults from access to school systems in the developing world results in individuals and communities being denied quality education; this not only leads to unemployment, underemployment, low income, and a high risk of poverty, but also represents a needless waste of human talent and potential. To target this problem, this project extends work conducted under a pilot project addressing issues of literacy education with young deaf people in the Global South. Creating, implementing and evaluating our innovative intervention based on the peer teaching of English literacy through sign language-based tutoring, everyday real life texts such as job application forms, and the use of a bespoke online resource, enabled us to generate a sustainable, cost-effective and learner-directed way to foster literacy learning amongst deaf individuals. To reach further target groups and conduct more in-depth research, the present project extends our work to new groups of learners in India, Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda and Nepal, both in primary schools (ca 60 children in India, Ghana, and Uganda) and with young adult learners (ca 100 learners in interventions, plus ca 60 young adults in scoping workshops in Nepal and Rwanda). In the targeted countries, marginalisation begins in schools, since many have no resources for teaching through sign language, even though this is the only fully accessible language to a deaf child. This project intends to examine how we can change some of the dynamics that contribute to this, by involving deaf individuals in the design of new teaching approaches, and by using children and young people's everyday experiences and existing literacy practices as the basis for their learning. Participants in such a programme will not only develop English literacy, but "multiliteracies", i.e. skills in sign languages, technology, written English, gesture, mouthing, and other forms of multimodal communication. Developing a multilingual toolkit is an essential element of multiliteracies. Being 'literate' in the modern world involves a complex set of practices and competencies and engagement with various modes (e.g. face-to-face, digital, remote), increasing one's abilities to act independently. Our emphases on active learning, contextualised assessments and building portfolios to document progress will increase the benefit to deaf learners in terms of their on-going educational and employment capacity. Apart from the actual teaching and interventions, the research also investigates factors in existing systems of educational provisions for deaf learners and how these may systematically undermine and isolate deaf communities and their sign languages. Our analyses will identify the local dynamics of cultural contexts that our programmes and future initiatives need to address and evaluate in order to be sustainable. One challenge we encountered in the pilot was the lack of trained deaf peer tutors. There is a need for investment in local capacity building and for the creation of opportunities and pathways for deaf people to obtain formal qualifications. Therefore, at least four deaf project staff will enrol on an MA programme in Applied Linguistics/TESOL at our partner institution in India. We will develop training in literacy teaching and in research methods for all deaf project staff.We will also develop and adapt appropriate assessment tools and metrics to confirm what learning has taken place and how, with both children and young adults. This includes adapting the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for young deaf adult learners and the 'Language Ladder' for deaf children so that we use locally-valid test criteria. To document progress in more detail and in relation to authentic, real life literacy demands we need to create our own metrics, which we will do by using portfolio based assessments that are learner-centred and closely linked to the local curricula.