Considering sign bilingual education in cultural context: a survey of deaf schools in Jiangsu Province, China

In Western countries, development of sign bilingual programmes has typically occurred in educational contexts where aural/oral methods are already well established, and integration of deaf children into mainstream schooling is a predominant pattern. This paper discusses introduction of bilingual provision in a very different context. In China, although the last decade has seen rapid development of early intervention programmes for deaf children with provision of hearing aids and speech training, there are still many thousands of deaf children in segregated schooling, where sign-supported Chinese is used to teach the curriculum. In the context of a meeting to introduce concepts of sign bilingualism to deaf schools in Jiangsu Province, a survey was carried out of 22 Jiangsu deaf schools to ascertain basic characteristics of the student population and teaching staff. The results are presented here with their implications for the future development of different educational approaches: it is argued that different sociocultural and educational contexts present different challenges for effective change.