Dissensus in Deaf Research: Scaffolding the Conflicts of Theory and Practice

Value conflicts surrounding deafness—disagreements about senses, cognition, language, and power—obscure research which connect them. The lack of empirical theory about how and why deaf educators teach constrains researchers and educators who seek to reform the field and exacerbates problems related to deaf learning. Researchers and pedagogues invested in deaf education are divided by conflicts of value. Axiological differences result in a nearly insurmountable gap between researchers and practitioners (Easterbrooks, 2017, p. 25 in Cawthon & Garberoglio, 2017). This presentation offers a critical synthesis of the literature on deaf education pedagogy research and focuses on synthesizing issues related to visual discourses and phenomena in teaching practice. Themes emerging from the study evince crucial ruptures in the values, ethics, and aesthetics of deaf research which preclude progress. Conflicts arise from diverse professional orientations, disciplinary foci, and paradigmatic variations but are united by the common problems of teaching deaf students and the promising potentiality of deaf-centric research on visual pedagogy. This study is primarily based on a critical literature review which preceded a two-year multi-method (grounded theory and case study) qualitative study (which is in progress at present). In the early 1900s, Vygotsky described deaf pedagogy as unsystematic and implored change. One hundred years later, Swanwick and Marschark (2010) call our work unsuccessful. Dissensus is manifest in theory’s obstruction; however, dissensus gives clarity relative to the agonistic problems of axiology—the ethics and aesthetics of power in deaf education. Deaf educational theorists need to develop ways to decipher the how and why of deaf visual pedagogy (Cawthon & Garberglio, 2017; p. ix). Deaf social theory enhances how researchers understand vision in learning; however, in spite of advancement, deaf pedagogy theory is underdeveloped (Lang, et al. 1993; Thoutenhoofd, 2010). By synthesizing the following concepts (deaf axiology, the biosocial paradigm, deaf visual pedagogy) I address the following problems: There is no contemporary theory to describe the unified deaf biosocial ecology, no extant theory to productively analyze conflict on vision, or foreground axiology in decision-making, or centralize vision as a strategy to transform power (Bauman & Murray, 2014; Beal-Alvarez, 2017; Fernandes & Myers, 2010; Friedner 2010). There is no systematic theory, no standard toolkit of analytic techniques, or generalized empirical approach. Cawthon and Garberoglio (2017) summarize: “without an adequate research base, there cannot be effective practice. Without an understanding of the needs in deaf education, there cannot be research that supports effective practice. (p. xii). This proposal directly works toward the year\u27s theme: Connecting the Dots. The project focuses on clarifying the issues that disconnect researchers from teachers and from deaf individuals and society more broadly. Introducing the concept of Deaf Axiology Deaf visual pedagogy and the biosocial paradigm of deaf research to the established corpus of deaf-centric philosophy on teaching (e.g. deaf epistemology and deaf ontology, deaf gains in research on teaching) allows for the development of new critical lexicon to productively address and resolve longstanding conflicts of our field. The ultimate goals of the project include opening trans-disciplinary conversations among stakeholders and enhancing the practices of deaf education teacher-educators

Aesthetics, Culture, Power Critical Deaf Pedagogy and ASL Video-publications as Resistance-to-Audism in Deaf Education and Research

From a critical pedagogy standpoint, we examined a bilingual (American Sign Language [ASL] and English) video-publication titled “Seizing Academic Power.” The video-publication explores interactions of power and knowledge in deaf education and research and proposes tools to subvert ableism and deficit ideologies within them. By centralizing multiple visuospatial modalities, the video-publication’s medium is also its message. Qualitative data were produced and analyzed via structured coding cycles then interpreted through two theoretical frameworks focused on culture and aesthetics in critical pedagogy. Our analysis highlights conflicts at the nexus of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology of deaf education and research. Findings reveal how deaf students gain and develop critical consciousness within the classroom, depending on their teachers’ conceptions of marginalized cultures, use of signed languages, and multimodal knowledge, all of which modulate power and ethics in deaf pedagogy and research about it. Our study concludes with implications for ASL video-publications for teacher-training in deaf higher education and in research production and dissemination

A decisive role for deaf epistemologies: analyzing power/knowledge in critical deaf pedagogy

In American Sign Language (ASL), Transgressing the Object IV (2012): Critical Pedagogy depicts deaf women engaging in cinematic critical theory. According to the video-text, transgressing conceptualizes inequities of power and knowledge in deaf education and documents educational interactions about audism (antideaf oppression), sexism, and intersectionality. The women construct individual and collectivist deaf epistemologies that comprise an egalitarian counternarrative depicting critical deaf pedagogy. To interpret these pluralist discourses, I explore a theoretical framework about Deaf Culture in teaching and deaf aesthetics in learning. By doing so, I generate three analytic findings: 1) how culturally-revitalizing deaf pedagogies are established, 2) how power/knowledge is shared in equitable heterarchies, and 3) the benefits of educational interactions with deaf aesthetics, classroom architecture, sign language metaphors, and embodied multimodality. Finally, I describe the decisive role of deaf epistemologies in critical deaf pedagogy and juxtapose my findings against a conceptual framework about deaf peoples self-determination and struggles for legitimation