Teaching at the intersection: Bilingualism and neurodiversity

Bilingualism and Bilingual Deaf Education, edited by Marc Marschark, Gladys Tang, and Harry Knoors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, 495 pp., hardcover, ISBN 978-0-19-937181-5)THIS BOOK DISCUSSES aspects of bilingualism and bilingual education that directly or indirectly affect education. It offers an overview of research on education that shows evidence of bilingualism among children, focusing on their acquisition of language and bimodal and bilingual processing. The editors state that not enough research has been done on effective education for people and on whether bilingual education could endorse Deaf education.Interestingly, in the book the word deaf is written with a small d, not with a capital D, already placing it in a position that does not assume a Deaf perspective on education. Instead, this usage of lowercase deaf indicates that the book is an aggregation of research that includes studies that use D and others that use d.The book seems to be more general in that it reflects several views of the work produced up to now that does not put forward a consensus view of education.The volume is organized in three parts: (1) a general discussion of Deaf bilingualism; (2) a focused discussion of Deaf educational issues; and (3) a more specific analysis of the bilingual setting in coenrollment environments experienced by children. Each of these three parts includes works by several authors.Part one considers various perspectives on Deaf bilingualism, especially with respect to linguistics, language issues (including bilingual acquisition and bimodal bilingualism), psychosocial development, the relationship between reading and sign language, and signed and spoken language development.The findings presented here indicate that Deaf people leverage interconnected language systems and learn how to use them in forms appropriate for their interlocutors and the relevant communication purposes of any given context. Several of the authors mentioned in this section state that it is crucial to guarantee bimodal/ bilingual development for children inasmuch as language development depends on signed and spoken language access, which will enable children to build self-identity and acquire cultural, linguistic, and cognitive skills. Cross-language interaction and coactivation are also considered, together with the effects of bilingualism on cognitive control and the consequent implications for Deaf education. Also in this first part, several authors discuss the effects of a neurolinguistic perspective, such as the possibility of producing both languages at the same time in code-blending examples from early sign language users, indicating the impact of age on neural systems. These chapters present basic research studies on the characteristics of a bilingual Deaf person.For educational purposes, a number of authors in this first section state that, although the acquisition of sign language seems to be crucial, we still have much to learn about how to design bimodal/ bilingual educational curricula. Several chapters are devoted to childrens reading development.Their authors present research findings that suggest that sign language may have a positive correlation with reading comprehension, but they also present other studies with contradictory results. For children with cochlear implants, research is presented that supports the use of a spoken language with signs cooccurring with speech as the preferred educational approach (rather than a bilingual education model).This controversy about the role of sign language again points out the inconsistency between the chapters regarding the Deaf point of view. Other research in this section presents a perspective of difference, not deficiency, claiming that language plays an important role in Deaf people s lives since they have unique linguistic-communicative experiences at home, at school, and in their general social lives. …

w e do not know as much as we should about the extent of bilingual or bicultural programs in American public education. Legally, they are now required for any student who has some difficulty learning in English. These requirements do not stem from federal legislat i on -which only provides funds to assist in bilingual or bicultural education--but from two other sources. First, many states now require such education. Second, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare made bilingual education a requirement by interpreting the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of national origin by recipients of federal funds in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to cover children raised speaking another language. School districts must provide some program of bilingual education to be in compliance with the law. This requirement has been upheld in rather ambiguous language by the Supreme Court, which thereby enabled the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to go further and require more definitely some action by school districts. There are other legal bases for such programs, such as consent judgments stemming from court cases under which such programs are mandated. The Aspira case in New York City is the chief example. In addition to the facilitating legislation, providing funds for such education, that has been passed at the federal level, other federal legislation provides funds for research and development of curriculum materials for education in one's ethnic heritage. The reality is much more difficult to describe than the law. Whether provided under Office of Civil Rights requirements, or under a consent judgment, such as the one under which bilingual education is offered to the Spanish-speaking children of New York City, or under state law, an initial problem in bilingual education is, to whom must it be provided? The " w h o m " is generally defined as someone having difficulty in English, but how much difficulty, and how is it to be measured? Those pressing for bilingual education want it to reach the largest possible numbers; those who provide it (school districts) want to provide it to the smallest possible numbers. It is expensive, it is special education, and all school districts are strapped for money. Thus we find arguments over what tests should be used; what the cut-off point for those defined as requiring bilingual education should be; whether if these children do poorly in English they may not be doing equally poorly in a foreign language, thus leaving moot the question of which language of instruction (or induction) should be used, and the like. Equally difficult to define with any clarity in regulation or court decision is what kind of program must be provided to these children. Indeed, my difficulty in forming an opinion on these developments is caused by the fact that it is unclear to me just what goes on in such education--how many children, taught in how many classrooms, by teachers of what background and what training, for how many years?---and I do not know whether anyone has such figures. But there is no question that legally any child who has a problem with facility in English owing to foreign-language background has a fight to something--and that something involves some degree of teaching in the language that child has been raised speaking. There is also a strong bias among those administering these requirements in favor of more than that. Responsive as they are to interest groups pressing for a broader measure of bilingual and bicultural education, they are also sympathetic to teaching the ethnic heritage and background, as well as to simple instrumental use of the foreign language for a brief period to facilitate educational achievement. It would be interesting to get some sense of the extent of bilingual and bicultural education now. It would be even more interesting--though no simple census or survey can tell us this--to get some sense of what actually goes on in these classrooms. We lack good ethnographic descriptions of bilingual-bicultural classrooms. Undoubtedly they range from classes of solid academic content conducted in a foreign language by well-trained and competent teachers, to -as one anecdotal account puts i t -a class in contemporary history that is supposed to be conducted in Spanish in which neither the teacher nor the students knew the Spanish for key terms they were discussing. We have institutionalized, through law and practice, bilingual and bicultural education; to what extent and

Handicapped children who are also limited-English proficient (LEP) have generally not been served adequately in the schools. Few practitioners are trained to diagnose and treat culturally and linguistically different children. Furthermore, in school systems which have resisted bilingual programs, special education has been enlisted to carry out the ignominious task of segregating LEP children from mainstream classrooms. As a result, a curious placement pattern has occurred whereby some LEP handicapped children are underserved whereas many normals are placed in special education. The traditional reluctance on the part of special education to recruit minority professionals and its separation from regular and bilingual education have stood in the way of progress. Nevertheless, a number of teacher training institutions have received grants to institute rudimentary bilingual special education programs with courses designed to bridge these gaps. Research developments also suggest that bilingual special education may emerge as a viable specialty within special education.

Over the course of several decades, the field of bilingual special education has found much support in the reform movement that has become known as multicultural education. Born out of the 1960s civil rights movement (Mclaren & Munoz, 2000), multicultural education “is a field in education that is dedicated to equal opportunity for all students. Even groups who appear to be monocultural are diverse in regards to class, gender, and language” (Ooka Pang, 2005, p. 213). Multicultural education “assumes that race, ethnicity, culture, and social class are salient parts of U.S. society. It also assumes that ethnic and cultural diversity enriches the nation and increases the ways in which its citizens can perceive and solve personal and public problems” (Banks, 2002, p. 1). Thus, multicultural education supports the call for bilingual special education in teacher preparation and in schools. For special educators, in particular, understanding the link between exceptionalities and cultural diversity is fundamental to their professional role (Hallahan et al., 2009). In the context of a multilingual and multicultural country, such as the United States, bilingual special education is no doubt the best way to ensure that a subgroup of our population (i.e., bilingual exceptional children) has real opportunities to succeed. A major concern for any educator, but especially for bilingual special educators who value and seek to implement multicultural education, is to ensure that bilingual exceptional learners are not placed at a disadvantage because of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Here the term culture encompasses all the various aspects (subcultures) that contribute to define an individual. These are race, ethnicity, language, exceptionality, sexual orientation, gender, religion, socioeconomic background, and age.

The last three decades have produced considerable activity in the nation’s courts and in the U.S. Congress regarding policy in special education and bilingual education, including landmark court decisions, major pieces of legislation, as well as recent retrenchment in bilingual education. As a result, educational policy in both bilingual and special education has undergone significant change. The initial thrust of this change resulted in new and expanded federally mandated educational services for handicapped students and for students who were limited-English speaking. Most recently, there has been considerable “backlash” to bilingual education, which has directly affected the direction of policy in this area. This paper provides an analysis of the major legislative and litigative changes in bilingual and special education and the impact that these changes have had on handicapped students who are limited-English speaking. The analysis will illuminate some of the forces operating to bring about th...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the overall trend of qualitative case studies in the field of special education listed in domestic education-related journals and to present the direction of future research.
 Method: The papers to be analyzed are 51 qualitative case studies in the field of special education listed 31 domestic education-related journals, and analysis factors were used to analyze trends by year and journal, trends by research topic, and characteristics of research methods. The research findings through data analysis are as follows.
 Results: As a result of the studies, qualitative case studies in the field of special education in Korea have conducted in the field of various special education, treatment education, general education, and social welfare, with the research of subject education and instruction-learning strategy and the research related to family support accounting for the largest portion. Single-total case studies and technical - descriptive studies were the most common research design and type in research methods, and interview studies were the most frequently conducted in special schools for special education teachers and students with intellectual disabilities. In addition, it was found that various methods were used to secure the trustworthiness of qualitative case studies.
 Conclusion: Based on the above findings, qualitative case studies in the field of special education should present research designs and types so that the research methodological elements of qualitative case studies can be clearly revealed, and as it is a study on a specific case, systemicity and concreteness need to be clearly described so that the boundary between temporality and spatiality of the case can be clearly revealed. And finally, in order to secure the truthfulness of the research, detailed comments are required on the data collection process and the verification method.

Special education and bilingual teachers are in high demand. Many teachers in these specialization areas enter the profession via alternative certification programs, expedited routes to teacher certification. There is little research focusing on the specific support needs of novice special education and bilingual teachers from these widely varying preparation programs. Therefore, this study looks at the perceptions of novice teachers in special and bilingual education with alternative/nontraditional preservice preparation. The study used an online survey approach with Likert-type scaled items and open-ended questions.

Bilingual education and special education initially appear to be solutions to problems. Bilingual education offers instruction to children whose primary language is not English; special education offers instruction to children with physical or emotional handicaps. What the two programs share seems quite superficial: they attend to the needs and interests of some identifiable subset of the student population, both have sparked political controversy, and sometimes they overlap or deal with the same children.' At this superficial level, comparing the two programs hardly seems likely to reveal anything that is not already apparent about each one. This article suggests, however, that a comparison of the programs yields important insights into why each one has been controversial and what may be at stake in the construction and implementation of the programs. In so doing, this article argues that the two programs actually encounter the same problem, which can be cast as the question: how can schools deal with children defined as different without stigmatizing them on that basis? For a glimpse of the shared problem, consider this curiosity: during the past few decades, educational policymakers switched allegiance to bilingual programs, pulling students at least part-time from the mainstream classroom, while at the same time educators have sponsored special education programs integrating exceptional students into the mainstream classroom. This changingof-the-guard on integration suggests an initial version of the dilemma encountered by bilingual and special education. Are the stigma and unequal treatment encountered by minority groups better remedied by separation or by integration of such groups with others? Either remedy risks reinforcing the stigma associated with assigned by either ignoring it or focusing on it. This double-edged risk is the difference dilemma.

Bilingual special education, in its brief history, has undergone several shifts in emphasis—for example, from nonbiased, native-language assessments to bilingual services. Increasingly, training programs for teachers of students with both limited English proficiency and disabilities have emphasized an interface between special education and bilingual education. Though cuts in federal funding have reduced the number of training programs, the quality of training has improved. This article describes a pilot program of the California Special Education Project. Begun in 1984, this 3-year staff development program included a combination training and implementation phase, and in 1988 it won an award for exemplary services to language-minority children in special education.

This article identifies specific content that teacher trainers in special and general education should consider incorporating into preservice training programs in an effort to address the over- and underrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education programs. The development of multicultural education as a body of knowledge and the continuing work in bilingual education on issues related to effective teaching strategies for working with language-minority and second-language learners suggest a variety of approaches for all students. Contributions from these fields can be of benefit in developing effective practices and programs for diverse special needs learners. Examination of this work and its application in special education settings is suggested.

Preface 1. Bilingualism and Bilingual Deaf Education: Time To Take Stock Harry Knoors, Gladys Tang, and Marc Marschark Part 1. Linguistic, Cognitive and Social Foundations 2. Language Development and Language Interaction in Sign Bilingual Language Acquisition Carolina Plaza-Pust 3. Language Acquisition by Bilingual Deaf Preschoolers: Theoretical, Methodological Issues and Empirical Data Pasquale Rinaldi, Maria Cristina Caselli, Daniela Onofrio, and Virginia Volterra 4. Bimodal Bilingual Cross-Language Interaction: Pieces of the Puzzle Ellen Ormel and Marcel Giezen 5. Sign Language and Reading Comprehension: No Automatic Transfer Daniel Holzinger and Johannes Fellinger 6. The Influence of Communication Mode on Language Development in Children with Cochlear Implants Elizabeth Walker and Bruce Tomblin 7. Psychosocial Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children in the 21st Century: Opportunities and Challenges Manfred Hintermair 8. Bilingualism and Bimodal Bilingualism in Deaf People: A Neurolinguistic Approach Ana Mineiro, Maria Vania Silva Nunes, Mara Moita, Sonia Silva, and Alexandre Castro-Caldas Part 2. Education 9. Navigating Two Languages in the Classroom: Goals, Evidence, and Outcomes Marc Marschark and ChongMin Lee 10. Improving Reading Instruction to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students Loes Wauters and Annet de Klerk 11. Quality of Instruction in Bilingual Schools for Deaf Children: Through the Children's Eyes and the Camera's Lens Daan Hermans, Loes Wauters, Annet de Klerk, and Harry Knoors 12. Shifting Contexts and Practices in Sign Bilingual Education in Northern Europe: Implications for Professional Development and Training Ruth Swanwick, Ola Hendar, Jesper Dammeyer, Ann-Elise Kristoffersen, Jackie Salter, and Eva Simonsen Part 3. Bilingual education in co-enrollment settings 13. Language Development of Severe to Profoundly Deaf Children Studying in a Sign Bilingual and Co-Enrollment Environment Gladys Tang, Scholastica Lam, and Kun-man Chris Yiu 14. Social Integration of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in a Sign Bilingual and Co-Enrollment Environment Kun-man Chris Yiu and Gladys Tang 15. Sign Bilingual and Co-Enrollment Education for Children with Cochlear Implants in Madrid, Spain: A Case Study Mar Perez Martin, Marian Valmaseda Balanzategui, and Gary Morgan 16. The Twinschool: A Co-Enrollment Program in the Netherlands Daan Hermans, Annet de Klerk, Loes Wauters, and Harry Knoors 17. Co-Enrollment in the United States: A Critical Analysis of Benefits and Challenges Shirin Antia and Kelly K. Metz Epilogue 18. Perspectives on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education for Deaf Learners Marc Marschark, Harry Knoors, and Gladys Tang

Inclusive education has struggled to gain traction in recent years, despite it having been the prevailing philosophy globally for the education of students with a disability for more than quarter of a century, and in more contemporary times, for all students. In many countries there is evidence to suggest segregation and exclusion of some groups of students, particularly those with a disability or other identified needs, is again on the rise. The reasons for this are varied and complex, yet one notion that requires further exploration is the role special education, and those working in the field, have played in the inclusive education debate. Inclusive education emerged from within the special education debate, and much of the discourse around it still attaches itself to ‘residual ideas’ from each of the exclusion, segregation, and integration eras (Mac Ruaic 2020). Having grown out of the field of special education, inclusive education consistently gets entangled in the politics of disability and education (Artiles and Kozleski 2016). The challenges from special educators to protect what has traditionally been their educational space are real (Sailor 2017). Slee (2018a) describes the recent push against inclusive education from within the special education field as a ‘reassertion of brand special education’ (p. 24). Advocates of special education have fought to maintain separate provisions for students with disability, in the form of segregated classes and special schools (Avissar 2018). The argument is based on the premise that this segregation is needed – it is for their own good (Slee 2018b) – because ‘special and general education are actually different’ (Kauffman et al. 2018b, p. 3). The argument goes that inclusive education, with its focus on place of education rather than on the instruction of education, places students with disabilities at a disadvantage (Kauffman et al. 2018b), and therefore separate placements are required. Imray and Colley (2017) position full inclusion as the enemy of special education, with statements such as this: ‘full inclusion seems to be intent on abolishing special schools and classes’ (p. 6). Assertions made by special educationalists, such as those described here, have set the debate as one centred around ‘inclusion verses non-inclusion’ (Jackson et al. 2018). This chapter explores the current literature as described above and connects it to the everyday practice of primary school principals, who have found themselves caught up in the politics of the special versus inclusive education debate.KeywordsSpecial educationInclusive educationMainstream schoolDisabilityQuality education

Background/Context: As teacher shortages prove to be a persistent problem across the United States, there is a growing reliance on alternative certification pathways to fill educator vacancies, especially in subject areas like bilingual education and special education. By placing beginning teachers immediately in full-time positions as teachers of record, these alternative, “synchronous-service” programs constitute a unique phenomenon in teacher education in which learning to teach and teaching occur simultaneously. Although decades of scholarship have debated the merits of “alternative” teacher preparation pathways, limited research has directly examined the implications of preparing teachers responsible for the education of multiply marginalized students through alternative routes. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study considers what it means to become a teacher of emergent bilingual students and students with disabilities through alternative licensure. Leveraging critical and queer perspectives on teacher learning, the study asks: What are the shared dilemmas of practice that beginning bilingual special educators experience during the first six months of their alternative preparation program? Research Setting and Participants: This study was conducted in the context of a graduate-level foundations of bilingual education course at a public research university in a Northeastern U.S. city. Nineteen teachers from two cohorts agreed to participate. Participants primarily identified as bilingual, Latinx, female Teachers of Color who attended as students the local school district in which they were now teaching. Research Design: Data comes from a qualitative longitudinal research project that aimed to journey with bilingual special educators through their synchronous-service preparation over the course of three years. Guided by a Freirean culture circle design, the study specifically reports on teachers’ dilemmas of practice during the first six months of their program, surfaced through weekly journal entries, class culture circle sessions, final course projects, and postcourse focus groups. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings suggest that teachers experienced dilemmas around how and to what degree to provide bilingual students home language support, navigating the boundaries of their ambiguous responsibilities at the intersection of language and disability, and reconciling deep commitments to communities with the challenges of synchronous-service preparation. Better understanding these dilemmas holds implications for teacher educators to facilitate more intentional preparation around the policy work of bilingual special educators.

The issue of forming an inclusive culture of specialists in the field of special education has been raised. The goal of the research has been outlined, and consists in elucidating the theoretical and methodological foundations of the formation of the specified culture, substantiating the modern trends in the formation of the pedagogical culture of specialists in the conditions of inclusive education, and providing methodological recommendations for its formation. Ways of introducing the newest paradigm of training specialists of the specified category into the national society as a component of the system of social security, responsibility and social cohesion of Ukraine in the conditions of modern integration challenges and strengthening of social cohesion in general have been indicated. The theoretical and practical essence of the latest trends of professional training in higher educational institutions in the conditions of inclusion is revealed. Current issues of the role of inclusion in society, strategies and trends of modernization of professional training, namely the inclusive culture, have been raised. The ways and prospects of modernization of the formation of an inclusive culture of specialists in the field of special education in the conditions of inclusion are clarified. So, the present state of the formation of components an inclusive culture according to the functional components system of the specified process is identified. An analytical review of the study of the formation of an inclusive culture of specialists in the field of special education has been given. The multi-vector model of training specialists in the field of special and inclusive education, including post-graduate education, has been highlighted, which allows to reveal creative potential and influence the comprehensive development of general, professional and psychological-pedagogical abilities. So, the prospects for the modernization of professional training in the conditions of modern society have been outlined, paying sufficient attention to the formation of an inclusive culture of specialists in the field of special education.

Bilingual Education in the 21st Century examines languages and bilingualism as individual and societal phenomena, presents program types, variables, and policies in bilingual education, and concludes by looking at practices, especially pedagogies and assessments. This thought-provoking work is an ideal textbook for future teachers as well as providing a fresh view of the subject for school administrators and policy makers. · Provides an overview of bilingual education theories and practices throughout the world · Extends traditional conceptions of bilingualism and bilingual education to include global and local concerns in the 21st century · Questions assumptions regarding language, bilingualism and bilingual education, and proposes a new theoretical framework and alternative views of teaching and assessment practices · Reviews international bilingual education policies, with separate chapters dedicated to US and EU language policy in education · Gives reasons why bilingual education is good for all children throughout the world, and presents cases of how this is being carried out