Transforming the Life Chances of Deaf Ugandan Youth Through Play

本项目研究乌干达失聪儿童的具体生活世界，重点关注通过手语习得在存在、社会性、自我反思和理解方面发生的根本性转变，包括新的体验和表达模式、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。根据残疾医学模型对聋人进行分类，这些模型将耳聋定义为相对于听力人群的缺失或损害（McIlroy 2005）。失聪青少年经历了语言习得的延迟，并且经常被排除在学习环境和相关机会之外，因为许多教育方法都以听力和语言为前景。手语与表演、视觉、运动和物质性密不可分，为重新想象和批判传统的表现模式提供了独特的视角。通过批判将耳聋视为残疾的主流社会文化观念，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，该项目研究：1)通过手语习得发生的存在转变，包括身份形成、知识、学习和理解。2)基于聋人（视觉和表演）具体能力的以儿童为中心的实践如何揭示对聋人生活经历的新见解。3)如何开发适合聋人生活方式的文化教学方法，并认识到聋人青年的视觉和表演优势。4)开发一门课程，作为方法和产出，调查和了解乌干达聋人青年的能力和社交技能，包括他们与听力社区的互动和融合。该项目倡导合作，以儿童为中心的感官人种学，利用乌干达失聪青年的具体理解和本体论优势，强调他们的潜力，并开发承认多种存在方式的替代教育方法。由此产生的民族志旨在具有跨学科的相关性，以及在教学法，政策和权利方面的理论和实际应用。乌干达失聪儿童的生活受到一种社会文化话语的影响，这种话语将失聪儿童视为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，聋哑学生的课程是为听力正常的人开发的。手语与身体是分不开的（Ladd 2003），通过“视觉手册”符号进行表演、体现和沟通（Bauman 2008）。因此，通过结合聋人交流的表演基础、指导学习、游戏活动和视觉人种学，该项目将发展一个以聋人为中心的实地工作环境，研究和展示聋人青年的生活世界。利用电影、摄影和表演并利用视觉能力的以游戏为基础的讲习班将为聋哑青年提供一种包容和以儿童为中心的学习媒介。除了书面人种志，这些研讨会的成果将是基于聋哑青年的经历和未来愿望的表演、摄影文章和电影，其内容将由孩子们塑造，在更广泛的社会文化话语框架下阐明他们的生活经历。这个项目将挑战人们在教育界对聋哑人的看法，证明对他们能力的唯一限制是一种没有考虑到多种存在方式的限制性教育模式。这个项目需要我承担乌干达手语和会话卢甘达语（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).