Work

Designing Strategic and Interactive Signing Instruction to Support Signed Literacy for Deaf Learners

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This design case documents the conception, development, and iterative refinement of Strategic and Interactive Signing Instruction (SISI), a framework designed to support the growth of signed literacy among deaf students in the United States. The core literacy principles—strategic, interactive, and linguistic—were reimagined for the signed modality, treating video texts as a primary literacy activity. The design evolved through multiple cycles of prototyping and classroom enactment with PreK-3 teachers and deaf students, during which a collection of artifacts, including a 45-item SISI instructional checklist, scaffolds, mentor texts, rubrics, an ASL skill inventory, and a professional development and coaching model were developed and refined. Data from classroom observations, compositions of video texts, and teacher feedback illuminate both the affordances and limits of the design.

Source: International Journal of Designs for Learning

DOI: 10.14434/ijdl.v16i2.40280

Author: Leala Holcomb

Institution: University of Tennessee at Knoxville

Language: English

Topic: Hearing Impairment and Communication

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders