Abstract
In 2009, Applied Sign Linguistics was for the first time the topic of international scholarship. Academic discussion involved areas such as: sign language teaching (SL) and learning; IT in SL learning; SL assessment; discourse analysis etc. In this paper, the aim is to discuss current developments in the field and in relation to deaf education in three main areas within the European Union (EU): (a) on the specific methods used in SL teaching; (b) on the shared disciplinary nature of the specific field (taking into consideration the larger cultural context within which SLs operate); and (c) on the constructs needed in order to research and study those fundamental issues of Applied Sign Linguistics. The paper argues that the future development of pedagogically oriented Applied Sign Linguistics is bound up with the capacity of the research infrastructure to undertake process-product study on the macro (i.e. SL programme evaluations) and micro level (i.e. SL classroom).
Keywords:
sign language teaching; Applied Sign Linguistics; sign language in Europe; signing in schools