Guidelines for Multilingual Deaf Education Teacher Preparation Programs

This publication aims to support the effort to create transformative changes within Deaf education teacher training programs in the United States and Canada. It is a critical time to reexamine these programs and ensure the provision of the highest quality education to prepare future teachers to meet the needs of Deaf students in today’s increasingly multilingual and multimodal climate. Deaf education teacher preparation programs need to understand the multiple and intersecting identities of their students to be able to provide education that is equitable for all. Programs that approach Deaf education through a multilingual lens are in a better position to produce teachers who are knowledgeable about the diverse language and cultural needs of Deaf students. The guidelines set forth in this volume can be used to help develop new undergraduate and graduate teacher training programs or to transition an existing program. The key goals and anticipated outcomes of this volume are:

to increase the number of multilingual Deaf education teacher preparation programs; to increase the number of fluent language and cultural models for Deaf children in varying educational environments; to increase the number of high quality teachers with competencies in multilingual strategies;
to increase collaboration between teacher training programs; and to increase research and professional development focused in multilingual pedagogies.