Michele Friedner

Professional Responsibility and Relationality in Deaf Education

This book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the concepts and practices of professionalism, responsibility, and relationality in the context of deaf education. Internationally, public attention has been drawn to professional and ethical ruptures and crises in early intervention and education for deaf children. These ruptures and crises both demonstrate a failure in organizations’ duty of care and raise new questions regarding professional responsibility and relational ethics in the field of deaf education and more broadly. The chapters investigate the views of teachers of deaf children in the United Kingdom on their roles, specifically in relation to medicalization; offer an ethnographic account and analysis of deaf immigrants’ experiences of deaf education settings on the east coast of the United States; and analyze an overreliance on technology in deaf education spaces in Indian classrooms and the impacts of this technology use on teacher expectations. They also explore interactions between educators and parents of deaf children in Los Angeles, California, as these actors grapple with making choices in a context of audism; and consider sign language rights for deaf children in early intervention and education through a Canadian case study featuring a child denied access to sign language and an appropriate and accessible education. This book will be an essential resource for students and researchers of critical pedagogy, teaching and learning, inclusive education, and disability studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Deafness & Education International.