Bilingual school education with spoken and signed languages
in Europe
Verena Krausnekera, Claudia Beckerb, Mireille Audeoudcand Darina Tarcsiovád
a
Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria;bDepartment of Rehabilitation Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany;cCenter for Research and Development, University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;dDepartment of Special Education Studies, Comenius University Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
ABSTRACT
At least since the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, deaf children worldwide have a right to education not only in the spoken and written language of their country, but also in the national sign language. The pedagogical use of a sign language in European schools for the deaf began in the 1980s and has since evolved significantly. This paper presents a survey of 39 European countries that documents the status of bimodal bilingual education using a spoken and a signed language. Data was collected through an expert survey on the three dimensions policies, practices and cultures of bimodal bilingual education and an analysis of relevant legal documents. The results reveal that bimodal bilingual education is increasingly implemented in deaf education but is not fully established all over Europe. In many countries, bimodal bilingual education is limited to special schools and is rarely offered in inclusive mainstream schools. Implementation processes are similar across Europe: Programmes are primarily initiated by parents, teachers or the deaf community but educational policies lag behind the practices at schools. Legal foundations (e.g. curricula and professionalization for the use of sign languages) guarantee the sustainability and quality of bimodal bilingual education.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 7 May 2020 Accepted 15 July 2020
KEYWORDS
Sign language; bimodal bilingual education; deaf education; language policies; inclusion; legal foundations for sign language
1. Introduction and background
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has recognized the right of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children to learn and to use a sign language in education (United Nations
2006; Pabsch 2016). As DHH children acquire at least one spoken and one signed language in family or school, they grow up bimodal bilingual, with languages in two different modalities (acoustic and visual). However, access to both languages can be difficult for DHH children: They might not or only to a limited extent be able to perceive spoken language, and in most families with hearing parents, a sign language is not (yet) used. This family communication was documented by Holzinger et al. (2007) in great detail for 116 families with a DHH child in just one region in Central Europe, but we have no reason to believe that it is substantially different in other regions (see also Hintermair
2006). Consequently, in their education an explicit focus should be laid on both languages. In the 1970s and 1980s, the first bimodal bilingual programmes were implemented in a few schools for the deaf in Europe. In many countries, these programmes were initially very controversial
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CONTACT Verena Krausneker verena.krausneker@univie.ac.at https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1799325
but are now becoming increasingly popular. This controversy is rooted in the historical development of deaf education. Since the late nineteenth century, it was believed that DHH children should be taught how to speak and trained to hear while sign languages were awarded a minor role (Branson and Miller2002; Lane1992; Lane and Fischer1993). Later on, sign languages were even deemed to hinder childreńs spoken language development and forcefully banned from schools for the deaf. Multilingual identities and lives (which were the reality and norm within deaf commu-nities) were not fostered by hearing educators. The pioneers who understood and saw the usefulness of sign languages and strived to bring them back into deaf education had to argue long and hard (Bouvet1990; Ahlgren and Hyltenstam1994; Lewis1995; Mahshie 1995). It is safe to say that the change towards inclusion of sign languages in education has been slow and it was in many countries met by active resistance. So far, a few academic publications on bimodal bilingual experiences of schools are available (a.o. for Austria, see Kramreiter and Krausneker 2019, for Germany, see Günther and Schäfke2004; Günther and Hennies2011), and also a description of diverse good prac-tice models (Krausneker et al.2017b). But so far, no comparative analysis on bimodal bilingual edu-cation in Europe has been published. Leeson (2006) summarized important aspects of the use of sign language in the education of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children and stated that, with the excep-tion of Scandinavian countries, in most European countries sign language was under-represented as a language of instruction and as a subject. She concluded that legal recognition of sign languages was not sufficient for their establishment in educational systems. However, she did not gather any country-specific data. To close this gap, we conducted a Europe-wide survey of bimodal bilingual, and bicultural programmes for DHH children.
We asked: What is the status of bimodal bilingual education in Europe, and how are current pol-icies, practices and cultures interdependent (or not)? In 2014–2016, we conducted several inter-twined studies aimed at documenting the bimodal bilingual educational landscape in Europe.1
In this article, we present as part of the overarching project, results of our study of the current state of bimodal bilingual education in 39 European countries, including a quantitative expert survey and an analysis of the legal context for sign language and educational policies.
The study was conducted with several basic assumptions in mind:
First, in keeping with the concept of plurilingualism, people who learn two or more languages can use these languages in many different ways in their everyday life. The goal of bimodal bilingual edu-cation is to prepare DHH pupils for their plurilingual lives and not to judge which language– a spoken/written or a signed language– or which kind of bilingual practice is ‘better’.
Second, pupils and teachers use entire linguistic repertoires including various modalities (reading, writing, speaking, listening, sign language production and reception) and in order to teach/learn in a meaningful way, have to adapt to various communicative partners (about translanguaging, see for example, Garcia2009).
Third, our study took into account the fact that DHH pupils are highly diverse. In everyday life, DHH pupils deal with spoken and signed languages differently, and independently of their hearing status. Throughout their life spans, linguistic preferences as well as competencies often change, thereby making it impossible to predict how individual linguistic and cultural iden-tities will develop. Therefore, policies and school practices must prepare pupils for the flexible use of spoken/written and signed languages in their life and not withhold additional languages. Bimodal bilingual educational programmes will create communicative possibilities and access to different languages.
Finally, there is not just one, but there are various successful models of bimodal bilingual edu-cation as well as different models of identity nurturing and intercultural upbringing.
2. Methods
In order to document the current status of bimodal bilingual education in Europe we adapted the index for inclusion (Booth and Ainscow 2003) as a framework. It consists of three superordinate
dimensions with various operationalizations which we have adapted for the situation of schools for DHH:
(1) Policies: Educational systems, educational laws and curricula, qualifications of teachers, and coop-erative work with parents, etc.
(2) Practices: Educational goals, classroom communication, teaching, etc.
(3) Cultures: Attitudes of the different actors (heads of school, teachers, parents, pupils, school administrators) towards bimodal bilingual education, etc.
These three dimensions are interdependently related, and organized in a triangle. One might argue that some aspects are the preconditions for others. The goal of this article is a description of the state of bimodal bilingual practice in Europe and the importance of policies for the other dimension.
2.1. Sampling
We contacted colleagues in 39 countries2 who work in the context of deaf education, sign language linguistics, or their national associations of the deaf (NAD) affiliated with the European Union of the Deaf and asked them to nominate experts in their country who were able to provide insights regarding the national state of bimodal bilingual education. Based on their – mostly overlapping – nominations, we selected one to three experts per country and invited them to participate in an online survey. Additionally, we also contacted all NADs and asked them to fill out our questionnaire. 62 experts and 12 NADs returned completed questionnaires. Eight countries could not be surveyed.3
2.2. Data collection of the expert survey and collection of legal documents
The survey was conducted by means of an internet-based questionnaire and addresses the three dimensions of policies, practices and cultures. Most of the questions were categorical questions, except for the last three open questions (name supportive and obstructive factors for the implementation of bilingual education; further steps needed in your country). The introduction was offered in English, German, and Slovak and International Sign and the short, clearly phrased questions were provided in English, German, and Slovak. For their contributions and answers to open-ended questions, experts could use any language they preferred, including a sign language. They made use of this option and submitted written answers in seven different languages, but no signed video.
To deepen the analysis of policies, experts were also asked to upload relevant documents, such as laws and curricula or links to legal foundations for bimodal bilingual education, along with com-ments. Thus, we built a database of laws that allow and/or prescribe the use of sign language in schools, laws that support bimodal bilingual education, curricula for bimodal bilingual education, cur-ricula for the subject‘national sign language’, etc. This corpus was enriched by a comprehensive study of publications (especially helpful was De Meulder 2015; De Meulder 2016) and our own additional research on laws.
2.3. Analysis
2.3.1. Data validation of the survey
In most countries, more than one expert took part in the survey. Answers from several experts in the same country were very similar and usually supported or complemented each other. A few contradictions were solved through communicative validation, i.e. to clarify directly with the respective expert or to ask another expert for their perspective. Overall, the answers of
experts and NADs supported or complemented each other across all surveyed countries. Thus, due to the internal consistency of the answers, we conclude that the data is highly relevant and valid.
2.3.2. Analysis of the survey
The quantitative expert data was evaluated for descriptive statistics (see chapter 3.1 to 3.3) and the three open questions were analysed thematically, then grouped into countable categories (see chapter 3.4). Tofind out the importance of policies for the practice and culture dimensions, corre-lations were calculated.
2.3.3. Analysis of laws and curricula
Additionally, an in-depth document analysis was carried out. The national legal systems are diverse, thereby making direct comparisons between countries impossible. Also, in some countries the legal situation of bimodal bilingual education is opaque or difficult to access (e.g. in Andorra, the Nether-lands, and Turkey, because experts from academia as well as educational institutions were not sure of the present legal situation nor which law applied to their case) while other countries (Iceland, Norway, and Sweden to some extent) make their laws available in English and therefore internationally accessible. All laws and curricula were screened for information on overall structure, on which regions or types of schools it was applicable to, on how many hours the national sign language is taught, which grades or how many learning years are covered, and since when it was in place. Then translations were made of relevant paragraphs and chapters with the help of native speakers, mostly with an academic background. Next, a text vignette was created for every country that has a legal foundation for bimodal bilingual education; this summary was written in cooperation with experts from the respective country until it was concise, clear and complete. These vignettes constitute thefirst European collection of legal foundations for bimodal bilingual deaf education and provide an overview of and insight regarding the situation of 25 countries. In the other 14 countries that were covered by our study, as far as we know, there are no legal texts to support the use of the national sign language in schools.
2.4. Public accessibility of results
To present the data in an accessible format, results were converted into an interactive online map. The results of the expert survey, the analysis of the open-ended questions, and the country vignettes were published online in the shape of a multilingual interactive map that is available atwww.univie. ac.at/map-designbilingual/laws.4
For this purpose, the results of the survey were grouped topics and with categorical scales. For example, three of our questions asked about the level of establishment of bimodal bilingual edu-cation in the respective country. The answers were united and scaled using‘nationwide’, ‘partly/ regionally’, or ‘no’ for each country. And on the same website, the legal foundations were made avail-able in German and English. Further project results (the mainfindings and the call to action on policy makers) were made available on the project website in altogether nine languages: four written and four sign languages plus International Sign.
3. Results: A bimodal bilingual European landscape
First, we describe the state of bilingual education in Europe by focusing on some aspects of the three dimensions policies (laws, structures, qualification of staff, early education), practices (languages as subject or of instruction, teaching material) and culture (attitudes).5The chapter on policies includes results from the analysis of the legal documents. Then (chapter 3.4), we present the results of the open questions in the survey.
3.1. Policies
3.1.1. Educational system and legal frameworks
In all 39 European countries covered by our study, school attendance is compulsory for DHH children. However, educational systems have changed fundamentally since thefirst bimodal bilingual models in Europe were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, when DHH pupils attended predominantly special schools. Today, the majority of them attends regular schools. In 25 countries (68%, N = 376, seeTable 2) more than 50% of DHH pupils attend mainstream schools. Infive countries (Andorra, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Malta), there are no longer special schools.
As Leeson (2006) stated, the legal recognition of a national sign language (for example, as a min-ority language) does not constitute a sufficient basis for using the language in schools for DHH chil-dren. Additional legislation is needed to ensure that the teaching subject of‘national sign language’ is legally secured and time is allocated to it in the regular curriculum. As of 2017, of the 39 countries surveyed, 25 countries had some legal foundation for the use of their national sign language in schools. There is a large variety of legal instruments ranging from one-sentence regulations or sug-gestions to several laws including detailed curricula that cover all 10 or 12 school grades. In principle, it must be noted, that legal documents may have different practical implications due to the legal structures of each educational system in Europe. For example, in some countries the right to bimodal bilingual education is regulated in a law, in other countries the existence of a corresponding curriculum is sufficient.
AsTable 1indicates, 17 of 39 countries have relevant laws, 8 countries have curricula for bimodal bilingual teaching, and 17 have curricula for the subject‘sign language’.
This means that there are another 14 out of 39 countries in Europe (those that were covered by our study but are not listed in Table 1) that have no legal foundations known to experts, NADs, or researchers to support the use of their national sign language(s) in schools.
Only 6 countries have fully established a nationwide legal basis for enacting Article 24 (4)(b) and (c) of the UN CRPD (United Nations 2006). The two sections ask state parties to take appropriate measures in order to facilitate the full and equal participation of people with disabilities in education. (For a full discussion and description of the implementation of the UN CRPD in each country, see Krausneker et al.2017).
Together with the data of the experts, we found a correlation between the fact, that if there are laws in a country (Table 1), then bimodal bilingual education tends to be perceived as‘well estab-lished’ by the experts and v.v. (r = .411*7, N = 36). There is even a stronger correlation between the existence of national curricula and how experts assess the degree of implementation of bimodal bilin-gual education in their respective country (r = .523**, N = 34).
Our analysis of each country’s legal basis for bimodal bilingual education was collated with data from De Meulder (2015). This led us to observe that of the 25 countries which have some legislation, curriculum, and/or legal basis for bimodal bilingual education in place, 20 (80%, N = 25) have granted their national sign language legal recognition. Furthermore, we note that of the 14 countries that have no legal foundation to support bimodal bilingual edu-cation, 8 (57%, N=14) have not yet legally recognized their national sign language. Legal recog-nition of the national sign language(s) is apparently an immensely strong driving force for developing and ratifying legal foundations for bimodal bilingual education and thus securing children’s rights to their sign language. However, we find it worthwhile to point out that the examples of good practice that we identified within the De-Sign Bilingual project were not only achieved in countries that have a well-developed legal foundation for bimodal bilingual education but also in countries that as yet lack supporting legislation (see Krausneker et al.
2017a; Krausneker et al. 2017b).
Table 1.The 25 countries that have legal foundation(s) for the use of sign language in schools. Country
Curricula
Laws Bimodal bilingual education Sign language
Austria ✓* Belgium– Wallonia ✓* Croatia ✓ Czech Republic ✓ Denmark ✓ Finland ✓ ✓ ✓ France ✓ ✓ Germany ✓* ✓* Greece ✓ ✓ ✓ Iceland ✓ ✓ Ireland ✓ ✓ Italy ✓ Lithuania ✓ ✓ ✓ Macedonia ✓ Netherlands ✓ Norway ✓ ✓ ✓ Poland ✓ Portugal ✓ ✓ ✓ Romania ✓ ✓ Serbia ✓ Slovakia ✓ ✓ ✓ Slovenia ✓ Spain ✓* ✓ Sweden ✓ ✓ Turkey ✓
*Only regional or only for some pupils.
Table 2.Experts’ assessment on policies.
Dimension Subtopic Number of countries
Policies Educational system Percentage of DHH pupils in mainstream schools. In 25 countries (68%,N = 37) more than 50% of the pupils are mainstreamed. Qualification and profession
alisation
Teachers are qualified for BBE: more than 10 teachers more than 30 teachers
more than 50 teachers per country
7 countries (19%,N = 36) 7 countries (19%,N = 36) 12 countries (33%,N = 36) There are continuing education programmes at
university level that cover: − the national sign language, − sign language linguistics, − didactics of BB education, − didactics of sign language,
− Deaf Studies/intercultural competencies
13 countries (46%,N = 28) 13 countries (46%,N = 28) 13 countries (42%,N = 31) 8 countries (28%,N = 29) 13 countries (48%,N = 27) Number of teachers who are DHH:
more than 10 teachers more than 30 teachers
more than 50 teachers per country
2 countries ( 6%,N = 36) 12 countries (33%,N = 36) 10 countries (28%,N = 36) Cooperation with parents Information on bilingual parenting is available. 14 countries (61%,N = 23) Note: BBE = Bimodal bilingual education.
3.1.2. Teaching staff
In order to promote spoken and signed language competencies, qualified educational staff are required; thus, we also tried to collect national curricula for teacher training that explicitly include sign language and Deaf Studies. This proved impossible because tertiary education has too many institution-specific curricula at different levels and few European countries have one national regu-lation regarding teacher-of-the-deaf education. Nevertheless, we did find that according to the national experts, in only 9 of 39 countries, teachers are offered comprehensive pre-service training and advanced in-service training. These teacher training opportunities encompass the national sign language, didactics of bimodal bilingual education, didactics of teaching the country’s national sign language to DHH pupils, sign language linguistics, and Deaf Studies. In a total of 21 European countries, in-service and pre-service teachers have no opportunities to study these subjects, and other countries offer training in only one or two of these areas.
In France, teachers for primary and secondary level students can qualify to teach their subject in Langue des Signes Française by passing an official state examination.8And there are 19 countries where more than 30 (and sometimes more than 50) teachers are qualified to teach the national sign language and/or teach using the national sign language (see Table 2). But the actual numbers of qualified teachers in special and mainstream schools could not be identified, since this would have entailed every school in each country answering our survey.
Experts stated that teachers who are deaf or hard of hearing were crucial for implementing bimodal bilingual practices (as role models and language models). There are currently 24 countries where DHH teachers are active in schools (67%, N = 36); seeTable 2. Many of these educators have undergone teacher training and are formally qualified as teachers. Nevertheless, experts in 23 countries brought up this topic in the open-ended section of the survey and stated that the numbers of qualified DHH teachers are too low. Thus, system-wide support for advanced training opportunities are needed. This is also supported by our data: If teacher training that includes sign language is offered, then teachers are more often qualified to use a sign language as a language of instruction (r = .444*, N = 23). However, there is no correlation between training opportunities and the assessment of teacher qualifications to teach the subject ‘national sign language’, so we can assume that in many countries, teachers need to acquire these skills on their own (e.g. through self-study).
There is a moderate correlation between the presence of laws and curricula, and the presence of opportunities for training in sign language linguistics at the university level (r = .460*, resp. r = .456*, N = 26). This indicates that sign language competence alone is not sufficient to establish bimodal bilingual education, but broader competencies, such as knowledge of sign language linguistics and didactics, are needed. Such fields of knowledge are only included in teacher training if bimodal bilingual education is backed by law, and vice versa.
The shortage of qualified teachers could be the reason why in some countries, the existing legal framework for bimodal bilingual education is not put into practice. As stated above, two-thirds of countries have some curriculum and/or law for implementing bimodal bilingual education, but in only one-third of the countries (13 countries, 34%, N = 38), the national sign language(s) are used as a medium of instruction in most special schools. We conclude that to simply create laws does not suffice; policies for teacher qualification need to be implemented so that an adequate number of qualified teachers is available for bimodal bilingual education.
3.1.3. Early education and extracurricular structures
When children have early access to languages, multilingual education tends to be more successful. In many countries in Europe, DHH children have no opportunity to learn their national sign language before starting school. According to the experts, only 16 countries (62%, N = 26) offer bimodal bilin-gual early childhood education. Parents receive information on bimodal bilinbilin-gual care and education in only 14 countries (61%, N = 23), and in only 20 countries (63%, N = 32) parents are offered sign language courses.
3.2. Practices
Table 3presents selected results of the experts’ assessment of the dimension of practices.
3.2.1. National sign language(s) and spoken language(s)
In 32 countries (84%, N = 38), the national sign language(s) are used in schools, and in 28 countries (74%, N = 38), there are schools that have defined bimodal bilingual competencies as an educational goal. But this is not available to all pupils nationwide, as evident in the following data:
. In only 13 countries (34%, N = 38), the majority of special schools have defined bimodal bilingual education as an educational goal.
. In 25 countries (69%, N = 36), the national sign language(s) are taught as a subject, but often only in special schools and often only as an elective.
. In many places, Sign language is only used in special schools. Only 17 countries (59%, N = 29) have a few mainstream schools where sign language is used as a language of instruction with DHH pupils. Only 4 countries (14%, N = 29; Bulgaria, Norway, Scotland and Sweden) include sign language in over 50% of mainstream schools with DHH pupils.
. 21 countries (57%, N = 37) have some schools where the national sign language(s) are offered as a foreign language credit to hearing pupils; such schools are clearly the exception and not the rule. The situation in mainstream schools is very often not well known by the experts, so no definite statements can be made.
. In 13 countries (45%, N = 29), classes are taught in a spoken language and include the services of sign language interpreters.
. The use of national sign language(s) as a language of instruction is related to the inclusion of sign language in teacher training (r = .444*, N = 23). However, there is no correlation between the use of sign language as the language of instruction and whether sign language linguistics and didactics are offered in pre-service or in-service teacher training.
Table 3.Experts’ assessment on practices.
Dimension Subtopic Number of countries
Practices Educational goal BBE is the educational goal:
− in special schools; 28 countries (74%,N = 38), with 15 countries (40%, N = 38) where this is the goal in less than 50% of special schools.
− in mainstream schools. 12 countries (52%,N = 23), with 9 countries (39%, N = 23) where this is the goal in less than 50% of mainstream schools.
Communication Sign language is the medium of instruction with DHH pupils:
− in special schools; 32 countries (84%,N = 38), with 18 countries (47%, N = 38) where this is the goal in less than 50% of special schools.
− in mainstream schools. 17 countries (59%,N = 29), with 13 countries (45%, N = 29) where this is the goal in less than 50% of mainstream schools.
Published teaching
material − for the teaching subject‘national sign language’; − for comparative linguistics; − for the subject Deaf Studies.
17 countries (55%,N = 31) 10 countries (32%,N = 31) 18 countries (58%,N = 31) Notes: BBE = Bimodal bilingual education.
3.2.2. Teaching materials
There are bimodal bilingual teaching materials available in more than 50% of the countries (N = 31, seeTable 3), particularly for language subjects and intercultural subjects such as Deaf Studies, and less so for STEM-related subjects such as math, biology, and geography. A large number of experts commented that there was a significant need for more teaching materials.
The existence of published teaching materials is significantly related to the existence of laws and curricula for bimodal bilingual education (.432* < r < .854*, N = 28).
3.3. Cultures: attitudes
In the dimension‘cultures’ we focus on attitudes of the different actors (heads of school, teachers, parents, pupils, school administrators) towards bimodal bilingual education. Experts stated that in all of the 39 countries covered in this study, there are teachers who support bimodal bilingual edu-cation. Nevertheless, there is still controversy:
. Experts in 15 countries (48%, N = 31) state that bimodal bilingual education is still controversial among the teaching staff in various programmes.
. In only 20 countries (54%, N = 37), the school administration is perceived as supportive.
. Experts in 30 countries (81%, N = 37) are sceptical about parents’ support for bimodal bilingual education.
On the other hand, there is a significant relationship between teachers’ positive attitudes and whether sign language competencies are seen as an educational goal for DHH pupils (r = .436**, N = 29). If teachers are open to bimodal bilingual education, then sign language(s) are used as instruc-tional languages (r = .473**, N = 29). A positive attitude, however, has no influence on whether sign language is offered as a school subject. This suggests that positive teacher attitudes are not sufficient for the implementation of sign language as a subject. Support from governments and school admin-istrators is needed to introduce new subjects in the school timetable.
3.4. Obstructive and supportive factors of bimodal bilingual education in Europe
In the qualitative part of the data, we grouped the experts’ statements according to factors that support or obstruct the implementation of bimodal bilingual education and considered these factors for each country. We proceeded similarly with the statements regarding necessary future steps for the success of bimodal bilingual education. Nowhere did the statements by 52 deaf edu-cation or sign language linguistics experts and 9 NAD experts contradict each other; on the contrary, their statements complemented and supported each other. Furthermore, the statements were very similar all over Europe and are thus valid and highly relevant. They can be viewed for each country on the interactive online map (see 2.4).
The experts rate support from educational policymakers as very important in the creation of legal measures and curricula. Furthermore, the professionalization of teacher-of-the-deaf education and also teachers’ attitudes are considered central for the expanded implementation of bimodal bilingual education.
Below, we summarize the obstructive (−) and the supportive (+) factors that the experts identified and we present these factors in 3 groups of policies, practices, and cultures. We organized each group by favourable and obstructive topics; every issue that was raised by an expert was included in this list. For a country-specific profile of topics, please consultwww.univie.ac.at/map-designbilingual. Most countries feature a unique combination of topics. Therefore, a direct comparison between or ranking of countries is not possible.
3.4.1. Policies
While some obstructive factors in the area of policies are highly diverse across Europe due to di ffer-ences in educational systems, the factors that were observed by the experts as supportive have a clear emphasis on professional training of educators.
– Small or decreasing number of special schools, and increasing numbers of individually main-streamed pupils without access to sign language;
– insufficient financial resources;
– several different sign languages in a single country (e.g. more teaching materials are needed); – the educational system is federally structured, with no national regulations for bimodal bilingual
education. Thus, relevant laws must be lobbied for in each individual county;
– lack of support from educational administrators and administrative bodies in the effort to achieve legal foundations for bimodal bilingual education;
– a shortage of qualified teachers;
– a dearth of pre-service and in-service bimodal bilingual education teacher training opportunities;
– doctors counsel parents of children who receive cochlear implants to avoid bimodal bilingual education;
– little information about bimodal bilingual education is available for any actors (parents, tea-chers, medical professionals).
+ Bimodal bilingual education is financially supported by school administration and government ministries;
+ a conversion/change of special schools into mainstream schools has taken place while maintain-ing bimodal bilmaintain-ingual education;
+ legal recognition of national sign language(s);
+ development of curricula for the national sign language(s) and bimodal bilingual education; + sign language is offered as a foreign language in schools;
+ teacher training in tertiary education includes building competencies for bimodal bilingual practices;
+ in-service training and information about bimodal bilingual education are available for teachers; + training of sign language interpreters (especially for assignments in mainstream classroom
settings).
3.4.2. Practices
Experts listed much fewer factors in the area of practices:
– Schools feature only spoken languages as an education goal. + Implementation of pilot projects for bimodal bilingual education; + relevant government ministries support bimodal bilingual education; + bimodal bilingual education has been a tradition for several decades.
3.4.3. Cultures
Within experts’ statements there was a strong dominance of the issue of attitudes towards bimodal bilingual education. This is a direct consequence of abovementioned century-old controversy around the use of a sign language in the education of DHH pupils.
– Negative attitudes against bimodal bilingual education (from medical doctors, parents, tea-chers, heads of schools, school administrators, mainstream school teatea-chers, and university
lecturers for teacher training programmes). These attitudes are rooted in the‘medical view’ that focuses solely on cochlear implantation and spoken language education for DHH children; – lack of research in sign language linguistics and related fields.
+ Lobbying by parents, deaf associations, DHH teachers and individual‘pioneers’ (e.g. linguists or others whofight for sign language);
+ dissemination of information about bimodal bilingual education;
+ policymakers, administrators, parents, and teachers who hold positive attitudes towards bimodal bilingual education;
+ teachers’ unions engage constructively with the topic of bimodal bilingual education;
Table 4.Future steps for the implementation of bimodal bilingual education (= BBE) in Europe. Policies:
Educational system
. Implement BBE for all DHH pupils in special and mainstream settings, regardless of their hearing status;
. implement BBE for group inclusion in mainstream schools; . capacity building for BBE within government ministries of education; . provide governmentfinancial resources for BBE programmes; . provide sign language interpreters in mainstream schools;
. establish cooperation between government ministries, schools, and deaf associations; . introduce the national sign language as a school subject;
. ensure that DHH pupils are taught according to the same educational goals as hearing pupils.
Policies: Laws / curricula . Legally recognize sign languages;
. create legal foundations for the implementation of BBE, and especially for sign language as a subject in special and mainstream schools;
. include the national sign language as a subject infinal exams; . develop BBE curricula for special and mainstream schools;
. demand that policymakers and governments implement existing laws supporting BBE. Policies: Qualification and
professionalization
. Provide more professional training opportunities in deaf education, sign language teaching, BB didactics, and intercultural competencies for hearing and DHH teachers in special and mainstream schools;
. Provide university-level training for BBE faculty;
. Establish interdisciplinary cooperation between sign language interpreters, mainstream school teachers, etc.;
. Foster international networking and student exchanges between BB schools; . Advocate for adequate (higher) salaries for teachers.
Policies: Cooperation with parents . Make information available to parents about the opportunities created by BBE, including for children with cochlear implants;
. provide unbiased counselling that describes various educational options for DHH children;
. offer free sign language courses for parents.
Practices . Conduct research about good practice models of BBE and sign language teaching, and improve dissemination of research results among teaching staff;
. develop additional teaching material and methods; . develop and apply tools for diagnostics and assessment. Cultures . Intensify cooperation between schools and researchers;
. change of deficit-oriented attitudes towards DHH people from relevant actors and society in general, with the goal of fostering acceptance and appreciation of multilingualism and diversity;
. recognize deaf communities as linguistic minorities;
. Perceive sign language and assistive hearing devices as complementing each other, not as mutually exclusive;
. understand sign language as beneficial for spoken language development; . conduct research in sign language linguistics, bilingual language acquisition, and sign
+ research in thefields of sign language linguistics and deaf culture fosters the development of positive attitudes towards bimodal bilingual education.
Accordingly, the experts independently outline very similar necessary future steps for their countries: Development of further professional training opportunities for hearing and DHH teachers; robust legal foundations for bimodal bilingual education; more research in sign language linguistics and bimodal bilingual education; and a change in attitudes towards bimodal bilingual education among actors who are still sceptical.
Table 4 summarizes which desired or necessary future steps the experts documented in the survey. Please keep in mind that these desired future steps differ among various countries and many experts described similar topics.
These data are highly complex, and we can provide a summary but not a discussion because each individual issue that was raised by an expert can only be fully understood in the context of a specific country. Nevertheless, the data are representative and valid because many of the topics were raised in several countries (for example, the issue of professional training for teachers was raised by experts from 25 countries), andTable 4provides a clear picture of the general dynamic in Europe: Every-where, policies are needed that enable the use of a sign language in schools and that secure linguistic and other competencies by professionals.
4. Discussion
The goal of this article was a description of the state of bimodal bilingual practice in Europe and the importance of policies for the other dimension.
From the experts’ assessments, only Denmark can be perceived as having fully established bimodal bilingual education. In 14 countries (36%, N = 39), bimodal bilingual education has been par-tially achieved, and in another 24 countries (62%, N = 39), bimodal bilingual education is available but certainly not established nationwide.9Legal foundations play a role in ensuring the continuance of bimodal bilingual educational approaches, but this does not mean that it is impossible without them; some countries feature schools that offer bilingual education with their national sign language despite the lack of legal or curricular foundations. So, they have an impact on practice and culture and vice versa.
4.1. Bimodal bilingual education is alive, but not fully established all over Europe
A multilingual, bimodal bilingual education is increasingly offered in European special and main-stream schools. This has become possible– among other reasons – due to the empowerment move-ment of deaf people and their families, due to solidarity by the disability movemove-ment representatives and with the backdrop of big societal changes in the understanding of multilingualism and disability. In all 39 countries covered in our study, the legal recognition of national sign language(s) plays a role in schools in some way. In 80% of these countries, some DHH pupils have the opportunity to learn a sign language in an educational institution, but this applies only to some DHH pupils, because a sign language is not available in all schools in every region. In nearly all countries, there are qualified DHH teachers (as well as hearing teachers) who not only have the adequate linguistic competencies for providing bimodal bilingual education, but also serve as role models and who are central in the devel-opment of intercultural competences.
In summary, we can state that bimodal bilingual education is alive in Europe today. In many countries, some DHH pupils have access to both spoken and signed languages. On one hand, early identification and hearing aid technology facilitate spoken language acquisition. On the other hand, in some countries DHH pupils can acquire high levels of proficiency in national sign language(s) due to increased professional training for teachers of the deaf and sign language teachers, the use of sign language as a medium of instruction, the implementation of sign language as a school subject,
and the development of bimodal bilingual teaching materials. Thus, pupils have the opportunity to develop both or either signed or spoken language in a developmentally appropriate time frame. This in turn eases their path to learning additional languages and enables full participation in education.
However, in Europe, not all DHH pupils have access to bimodal bilingual education. In many countries, bimodal bilingual education is limited to special schools and restricted to some geographi-cal regions. Bimodal bilingual programmes are offered by mainstream schools in only a few countries. This means that most children and parents in Europe must choose between so-called inclusive edu-cation in mainstream schools that only offer spoken language instruction, or bimodal bilingual edu-cation in special schools for DHH pupils. For a critical discussion of inclusive eduedu-cation for DHH pupils, see Murray J, De Meulder, and Le Maire (2018).
The opportunity to learn both spoken and signed language varies greatly from region to region in several countries. Only a few countries have comprehensive pre-service and in-service teacher train-ing that guarantees high quality bimodal biltrain-ingual education. Despite many steps forward in bimodal bilingual educational practices, these practices are not fully established nationwide in many Euro-pean countries. The UN CRPD describes deaf learners’ right to education and sign language, but this is not sufficiently implemented in many places in Europe.
4.2. Policies, practices and cultures need to go hand in hand
Successful reform of both special and mainstream schools needs to be supported from inside and outside of schools as well as from above and below by policy-makers and community members. Pro-cesses for reform are similar across Europe; they entail leaving behind a sole focus on monolingual spoken/written language and instead creatingflexible bimodal bilingual educational programmes. In many instances, these programmes were not initiated by policy-makers, but by deaf associations, parents, teachers, and heads of schools. This means that in many places, actual school practices are well ahead of policy-makers. However, support from policy-makers enables the sustainability of individ-ual (special) school endeavours and ensures that such pioneering efforts will result in structural changes in the educational systems. One significant finding from our study is the realization that laws and cur-ricula that support sign languages in schools are interdependent with professional pre-service and in-service training for teachers of DHH students and with the development of teaching materials.
Legal frameworks are also a prerequisite for establishing national sign language(s) as school sub-jects. Legal frameworks and professional teacher training opportunities will ensure that, instead of worrying about their survival, bimodal bilingual schools can focus on developing good practices and teaching materials (see Krausneker et al.2017a; Krausneker et al.2017b). Thus, in many countries, policy-makers and school administrators are responsible for enforcing processes of reform and implementation of bimodal bilingual education. However, educational policy-makers and administra-tors often need to be convinced to meet their responsibilities.
Legal frameworks alone are not entirely effective for achieving bimodal bilingual education. Both special and mainstream schools require intensive support in terms of improving teaching and organ-izational and staff development. Processes of reform are supported by positive attitudes from all actors involved: parents, teachers, heads of schools, and school administrators. Bimodal bilingual con-cepts are still controversial among teachers and parents, but in countries where bimodal bilingual practices are implemented, attitudes have changed toward supporting these practices. Apart from informing relevant actors, it is necessary to initiate new projects to enable bimodal bilingual school practices, help teachers gain experience, and establish bimodal bilingual education as a valued option for DHH pupils and their parents.
In 2016, the European Parliament voted on a resolution on sign languages and professional sign language interpreters which clearly states that parents of DHH children need to be counselled in a balanced and holistic way in order to be able to make informed choices, and parents must be pro-vided with the opportunity to learn their national sign language. Furthermore, this resolution calls upon member states ‘to encourage the learning of sign language in the same way as foreign
languages’ and stresses the importance of qualified sign language interpreters and teaching staff who are competent in sign language and equipped with the skills to work effectively in bilingual inclusive education environments (European Parliament2016).
4.3. Bimodal bilingual education is a special challenge for inclusive schools
In all countries covered in our study, the introduction of bimodal bilingual schooling coincided with the placement of DHH pupils in mainstream schools (instead of special schools). The inclusion of people with disabilities has resulted in educational systems becoming more accessible and enabling DHH pupils in many European countries to attend either special or mainstream schools. The combi-nation of bimodal bilingual and inclusive education is a special challenge; only about a third of the countries studied here have a few mainstream schools with defined bimodal bilingual educational goals for DHH pupils. Inclusive education is perceived as a threat to quality education for DHH pupils when it results in the closing of special schools without making any provision for inclusive bimodal bilingual education. In these instances, experts fear that bimodal bilingual competencies will be lost. This fear is justified, as we saw that our experts from all over Europe could tell us very little about mainstreamed DHH pupils in their respective countries. This suggests mainstream schools are not cooperating with experts in bimodal bilingual education, which in turn means that the experts’ knowledge is not put to use in mainstream schools that serve DHH pupils. The sustain-able implementation of bimodal bilingual education can only be achieved if it is also offered to DHH and hearing pupils in mainstream schools. An inclusive, bimodal bilingual education (see, for example, Kramreiter and Krausneker2019) means that it is accessible for both hearing and deaf chil-dren and it has something to offer to all of them. And in turn, it is people with inclusive educational experiences and competencies who will, in the long run, contribute to an inclusive, multilingual, society.
Because of the small number of DHH pupils and limited resources (i.e. there are not enough DHH teachers to provide bimodal bilingual education at every mainstream school in a country), it is not realistic for every mainstream school to offer bimodal bilingual education. Therefore, it is desirable to implement specialist inclusive schools in different regions with bimodal bilingual education programmes.
4.4. Outlook
This study’s insights regarding the present state and implementation of bimodal bilingual education in Europe are based on analyses of experts’ statements and legal documents. No data was collected that empirically describes the quality and effectiveness of bimodal bilingual educational practices. Our data consist mainly of estimates and statements by experts. The experts were chosen with great care, but they had diverse access to empirical data regarding their country. In a sub-study, additional data was collected from the heads of special schools in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Slovak republic (data on the three German speaking countries published in Audeoud et al. 2017). Furthermore, an additional set of data was collected from eight schools which were understood to be exemplars of good practice. Analysis of this data allowed the identification of factors for success of bimodal bilingual education (Krausneker et al. 2017a; Krausneker et al.
2017b). In the meantime, more countries in Europe have started to develop and to regionally (usually within counties) implement school curricula for the national sign language (e.g. Germany, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, Scotland). More country-specific and international research is needed in order to document and guide future developments in bimodal bilingual education in special and mainstream schools.
Notes
1. The project‘De-Sign Bilingual’ (2014–2016) was conducted by the following partner institutions: University of Vienna; University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education Zurich; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Come-nius University Bratislava; Ernst-Adolf-Eschke-Schule, Berlin; Elbschule, Hamburg; SekDrei, Zurich; Brigittenauer Gymnasium, Vienna; Volksschule 1, Klagenfurt. This strategic partnership has been carried out with the support of the European Community (2014-1-AT01-KA201-000891). The content does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Community or the National Agency, nor does it involve any responsibility on their part. For detailed Information on the project seehttps://designbilingual.univie.ac.at. For further results see also Krausneker et al. (2017a) (qualitative study of eight good practice examples) and Audeoud et al. (2017) and Tarcsiová (2018) (detailed quantitative study of the situation of bimodal bilingual education in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Slovakia).
2. Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxem-bourg, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom (without Scotland).
3. Kosovo, Moldavia, Monaco, Montenegro, Belarus, San Marino, Ukraine, Vatican City. 4. The authors are responsible for keeping this collection current and updated until 2020. 5. For a description of all aspects, see Becker et al. (2017).
6. Due to the fact that not all questions were answered by all experts/NADs, the total number of countries (N = as total answers of that question) varies and is thus indicated each time.
7. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
8. Seehttps://www.univie.ac.at/map-designbilingual/laws.
9. Finances or numbers of pupils could be contributing factors to these gaps in implementation, so we analysed the data to see whether the size of countries (square meters and inhabitants) or the wealth (per capita and budget spent on education in relation to gross domestic product) had any influence on the scope of implementation of bimodal bilingual education. We found that neither size nor the number of inhabitants have any influence; neither does the education budget. However, in general, wealthier countries tend to have more well-established bimodal bilingual education than poorer countries (r = .412*, N = 35). Again, there are exceptions to this, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany, which are wealthier countries but do not provide bimodal bilingual education on a large scale.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all participants and informants for their valuable support, and especially our team members Jeanne Auf der Mauer, Tamara Bangerter, KatkaČertíková, Dominik Garber, Stefanie Klingner und Angelina Sequeira Gerado.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by European Commission: [grant number 2014-1-AT01-KA201-000891].
Data availability statement
The data that support thefindings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, VK. The data are not publicly available because they contain information that could compromise the privacy of informants.
Notes on contributors
Verena Krausnekeris a sociolinguist at University of Vienna, Austria, where she has been a lecturer and researcher since 2002. Her main research focus is on language policies and sign language rights, especially in deaf education. From 2001 to 2007 she served as board member of the Austrian Deaf Association. 2009 to 2015 she served the World Federation of the Deaf as an expert. She was lead researcher in‘De-Sign Bilingual’.
Claudia Beckeris professor and head of the Department Sign Language Pedagogy and Audio Pedagogy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Her research interests include different fields of deaf education and sign language linguis-tics with focus on bimodal bilingual education, sign language acquisition, social-emotional development of deaf and hard of hearing children and inclusive education.
Mireille Audeoudis senior researcher at the University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education Zürich since 2002. Herfield of research is on pedagogics of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing; bilingual education (focus on students, teachers and educational models), psychosocial development, wellbeing and participation (longitudinal study). She is involved in further education training programmes and service offerings in this field. She also teaches research methods.
Darina Tarcsiováis professor of Special Education in the Department of Special Education of Comenius University in Bra-tislava since 1992. She focuses on research and publishing activities on the education and communication of the deaf and hard of hearing (sign language,finger alphabet, bimodal bilingualism, bilingual method, literacy and deaf and hard of hearing pupils). She cooperates with organizations of deaf persons and parents of deaf and hard of hearing children in Slovakia. She is involved in a further education training programme for teachers in schools for hearing impaired pupils and in inclusive schools.
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