Survey of residential and day schools for deaf students in the United States that identify themselves as bilingual-bicultural programs.

Abstract

The purpose of this survey was to determine how many residential and day schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the United States described themselves as bilingual-bicultural (BiBi) programs and to describe characteristics of those programs related to initial implementation, whether a single language (e.g., English or ASL) is promoted as the first language (L1) and the language of instruction for all deaf students, how English is conveyed conversationally to deaf students, the quality of ASL abilities of BiBi instructional and support staff; general characteristics of the curriculum and the specific reading and bicultural components of the curriculum; and characteristics of research being conducted to establish the efficacy of BiBi methods. Ninety-one percent (n = 71) of the 78 day and residential schools listed in the 1998 Directory of the American Annals of the Deaf participated in the survey, with 19 schools identifying themselves as BiBi. These included 16 residential schools and 3 day schools. Depending on the source for numbers of students in residential and day schools at the time of the survey, between 36% and 40% of students were in programs that identified themselves as BiBi. Sixteen of the programs reported becoming a BiBi program between 1989 and 1994 and only three after 1994. Of the 19 programs, 37% reported use of manually coded English (MCE) for conveying English to the students. Fluency in ASL of instructional and support staff varied, with 47% of the programs reporting that no more than half of the instructional staff were fluent in ASL and 68% of the programs reporting that no more than half of the support staff were fluent. Only 21% of the 19 programs reported having a formal BiBi curriculum with annual goals and suggested materials and procedures for teachers. Research implications of these data are discussed.