Linda Day: As BSL teaching expands, Deaf teachers of sign language need to be valued

It is 40 years since the Sign Language Learning project team at Bristol University first made a survey of classes in signing. 

At that time, “signing” was not even called  British Sign Language (BSL) yet.  They contacted most of the centres for deaf people to ask them about who taught their signing classes.  Almost all the classes were taught by hearing people and none were led by deaf teachers.

As a result they set up the project, “Sign Language Learning and Use” and having consulted with modern language teachers, they created an approach where deaf teachers were the sole teachers of BSL. 

The hearing members of the team  monitored the classes and made sure that the deaf teachers used BSL without speaking (much to the surprise of even the deaf teachers, they sat at the back and indicated when there was deviation from the policy of using only BSL).  

For the first time, the learners were in a class where deaf people were in charge and where they were immersed in BSL – even during breaks and at lunch in the pub, the learners only used signing.  This was an initial shock to the participants – who were often teachers of the deaf – but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  

This became the first University Certificate in Sign Language in 1981.

The Centre for Deaf Studies carried this approach over into their research and the teaching programme changed from only basic BSL to advanced Sign Language interpreting. 

The programme became one year full-time and eventually became the three year BSc in Deaf Studies where BSL was taught wholly by deaf teachers and only through BSL.  Students also had their other classes in BSL and were taught by deaf teachers. 

The students were universally positive about the approach and the results in learning BSL in a short space of time and to a high level, were evidence of the success.  

The University of Durham set up a Diploma programme for deaf people to become qualified in BSL teaching.  Further initiatives by CACDP (later Signature) to provide training to deaf people for a pre-arranged curriculum were insufficient to give the deaf teachers enough knowledge of language teaching methods as a whole and their status was becoming eroded.

There was an explosion in demand for BSL classes and Further Education Colleges brought in teachers who could teach the basic curriculum.  The problem was that many of those new teachers were not deaf nor advanced users of BSL.  Yet, they may have had other teaching qualifications which deaf people did not have.  Experienced deaf teachers often were sidelined and became only assessors of the language exams set by the national body.

Within education, there is a view that language classes are often taught by those who are not native speakers of the language.  In order to teach French in school, it is not necessary to be French.  So the argument is that it is not necessary for only deaf people to teach BSL.  However, there is a major difference. 

Those who teach French have typically learned French for 7 years at school, have made many trips to France and most importantly have continued to study French at University.  As part of that training they are also usually required to have periods of residence in France and often living with French families.  This is not comparable to the situation in the field of BSL where only rarely would a hearing person have these experiences.

The new BSL GCSE will increase access to BSL for larger numbers of people.  It is unclear what the role of deaf teachers will be as in the majority of cases, the classes will be in hearing mainstream school and colleges and teachers may need to be qualified teachers.  There are unlikely to be enough deaf teachers with the recognised national qualifications to work in hearing classes.

To a large extent, the issues are clear now.  There are too few deaf teachers of BSL – there may not be enough deaf people prepared to teach BSL.  There is considerable demand from hearing people to learn BSL.  And in theory, the more people who learn BSL the better deaf people’s involvement in society will become. 

The danger is that the language being taught becomes divorced from the culture of deaf people and the experience of deafhood itself.  We can see this in many cases where English structures and voice enter into the programme.  It is sometimes argued by French teachers that they “cannot” teach wholly in French as the students would not understand and so they intersperse their language teaching of French with English.  

However, this cannot be done at the same time (ie simultaneously) where French and English words are spoken together.  In BSL teaching, there is often a temptation to speak while signing.  All the evidence on this version is that it quickly becomes signed English  – not BSL – as the grammar of two languages cannot be presented at the same time.

The end point is the erosion of BSL as a distinct language and a return to the situation of 40 years ago.  If there are not enough deaf teachers of sign language then hearing teachers of BSL need to be trained to the same level as teachers of French with the same sorts of experience.  This looks like a very high aspiration at this time.

In summary, if you want to be really good at BSL, think carefully before taking any class, especially online, where there’s a spoken language involved without contact with deaf people and their community. You may find that what you have learned is not the BSL of the deaf community. 

By Linda Day, Signworld Director & former Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol. Thanks to Jim Kyle for his support with background information.