Meeting Global Deaf Peers, Visiting Ideal Deaf Places ... - NCRTM

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and deviate further from each other” (Van Mulders, 2005, p. 51). The present article focuses on deaf people in Flanders, the north of Belgium. Deaf schools in Flanders were established between 1820 (when the Ghent deaf school opened) and 1883 (when the St. Agatha Berchem deaf school opened). Before oralism, a couple of deaf teachers from Belgium left to study in Paris; when they returned home, they contributed significantly to deaf education (Buyens, 2005; Gerday & Thomas, 2001; Le Maire, 1996, 1997). Deaf teachers were banned from deaf schools in times of oralism, such as after the Milan Conference of 1880, which had a strong influence on deaf education in Belgium (Gerday & Thomas, 2001). Following an international trend, in 1979 one Flemish deaf school decided to implement the Total Communication approach, teaching in “Signed Dutch,” a signed system accompanying speech, rather than in a natural sign language (Van Herreweghe, 2002). Van Herreweghe (2002) has written, “Consequently, all the adults in Flanders, including deaf and Deaf adults, were educated orally, either in a special education setting or in a mainstream setting (although a small minority of young adults in this group were educated in Total Communication programs using what is called ‘Nederlands met Gebaren,’ or ‘Signed Dutch’)” (p. 75). In 1998, the first bilingual program was set up in a Flemish deaf school (De Weerdt, Vanhecke, Van Herreweghe, & Vermeerbergen, 2002), yet “most deaf children are still educated orally today, although signs are no longer banned and interest in bilingual-bicultural education is growing rapidly” (Van Herreweghe, 2002, p. 75). Three Flemish deaf people have been certified to teach deaf students, and a few are currently enrolled in education classes, but larger numbers of deaf people are either teaching sign language courses or working as teacher assistants in deaf schools. Deaf clubs in Flanders were established close to deaf schools in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Although deaf people participated in the boards of the schools, clergy from the schools played a larger role (Scheiris & Raemdonck, in press). Flemish deaf people were active on the board of the former national deaf federation Navekados. Yet the establishment of the federation was rooted in and strongly dominated by Catholic paternalism (Scheiris & Raemdonck, in press). Only since 1996, when deaf leaders began to experience ideal deaf places, have all board members of Fevlado been deaf (De Clerck, 2005). In 1980, the Flemish Federation of the Deaf established a “sign committee” to develop and promote “Signed Dutch.” In the 1990s, two research projects on Flemish Sign Language were set up by hearing researchers (Van Herreweghe, 1995; Vermeerbergen, 1996), and deaf people visited and received training in deaf centers around the world. Following international tendencies in favor of natural sign languages, in 1997 Fevlado officially decided to promote and teach Flemish Sign Language instead of Signed Dutch (Van Herreweghe & Vermeerbergen, 2004). The first Flemish Sign Language dictionary was published in 2004 (Van Mulders, 2004). Research Method and Analysis Because the phenomenon of deaf empowerment as it is experienced in life stories had not yet received systematic empirical scrutiny, I chose to conduct an exploratory qualitative case study (Stebbins, 2001; Yin, 1994). The participants were asked whether coming into contact with deaf culture was a turning point in their lives. A positive response to this question was a prerequisite for participation in the study. In ethnographic interviews (Spradley, 1997), Flemish deaf people were asked to reflect on key moments in their lives concerning their deaf empowerment, identity, and agency. My recruitment and sampling methods included both the use of a flyer that was posted in a regional deaf club (by means of e-mail and deaf club magazines) and snowball sampling (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). An initial core group of deaf people recognized as leaders (Ladd, 2003), who had already spread deaf cultural rhetoric in the Flemish deaf community and society, named other deaf people who had experienced the same phenomenon in their lives. As a deaf participant in deaf activism, I knew that deaf role models tend to know each other and exchange experiences (De Clerck, 2005). The research data were generated by videotaped ethnographic interviews in Flemish Sign Language with 15 Flemish deaf role models. The indepth interviews took a maximum of 3 hours each and followed a list of questions: for example, What/who has been important in your deaf empowerment? What is positive? What is negative? Do you prefer the present or the past? Did you go abroad and meet international deaf people? Did that change something? Can you describe what happened? You are active—what does that mean for you? What is important for other deaf people to know? What is important for hearing people to know? To ensure respondent validation (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994), the emergent themes, interrelations, and generalizations were discussed with the research participants to determine that my research findings seemed plausible from their perspective (Stebbins, 2001). This research was discussed in a regional deaf club as well VOLUME 152, NO. 1, 2007 AMERICAN ANNALS OF THE DEAF 160 O n e H u n d r e d a n d S i x t y Y e a r s 7
DEAF WAYS OF EDUCATION LEADING TO EMPOWERMENT as in meetings with smaller groups of research participants at my home. Grounded analysis is a process. “Ideas and recommendations which the research develops and makes emerge from the data are grounded in what the key participants have contributed through their worlds and experiences” (Goodley, Lawthom, Clough, & Moore, 2004, p.119). I coded my research data into categories (e.g., waking up, circle of deaf empowerment, deaf cultural rhetoric, global encounters) and identified relationships between those categories (e.g., Flemish deaf people wake up through informal exchanges of deaf cultural rhetoric in global encounters with international empowered deaf people (Breivik, Haualand, & Solvang, 2002; Murray, in press). That led to tentative generalizations and theory development (Leedy & Ormrod, 2003; Stebbins, 2001). Study of 15 deaf role models led to the emergence of three categories distinguishing different factors leading to the empowerment of the Flemish deaf community. In regard to the first place and earliest time frame (early 1990s), deaf study participants mentioned participating in a deaf awareness course, having contacts with international empowered deaf people, and visiting ideal deaf places, or deaf dream worlds. Concerning the second stage (mid- 1990s), Flemish deaf leaders mentioned being empowered by hearing sign language researchers and their information. In the third stage, the Flemish deaf community was able to empower its own people through deaf activism and collaboration with hearing allies, a movement that began in the second half of the 1990s and is still going on today (De Clerck, 2005). (In the course of my research, interviews I conducted in the 2000s with young deaf people studying abroad in barrierfree environments revealed experi- 8 ences of empowerment similar to those experienced by deaf people during short trips in the 1990s.) The present article explores the first stage of Flemish deaf empowerment and the concepts of visiting deaf dream worlds and global deaf encounters that emerged from the data and categorization of the data (Stebbins, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This will bring up a “new body of knowledge” on deaf empowerment, deaf identities, and deaf activism “that is uniquely grounded” (Goodley et al., 2004, p. 121) in the life stories of Flemish deaf people. Life stories illustrate how “narrators present stories in ways that accent resilience in adversity as to maintain a sense of coherence and personal integrity” (Goodley, 2001, p. 219, cited in Roets, Reinaart, & Van Hove, in press). Deaf subjectivities were chained in the meanings that institutions and hearing society forced upon them (Goodley et al., 2004), yet deaf hands, though ignored by hearing master narratives, never stopped signing. Discourse analysis can highlight the “sense of discursive oppression and resistance” that “runs throughout the narrative” (Goodley et al., 2004, p. 101). To explore this first stage of Flemish deaf empowerment, I use a montage of “composed” (Ellis & Bochner, 1996) ethnographic narratives of deaf empowerment constructed through narratives by Edward, Gaby, Ronny, Filip, and Vincent, the group of research participants who took the deaf awareness course set up by the Flemish Federation of the Deaf in 1990 and joined in study trips abroad between 1992 and 1994. Edward, Gaby, Ronny, Filip, and Vincent were all born in the 1960s and have known each other for a long time. Ethical use of (re)constructed insiders’ perspectives is a legitimate method for the representation and validation of qualitative research (Roets et al., 2005). I combine this life story research with the historical research of written documents (Jankowski, 1997). The analysis of reports of the deaf awareness course and articles in deaf magazines offer additional primary sources for the exploration of Flemish deaf cultural rhetoric. I translated all interviews from Flemish Sign Language into Dutch, and then from Dutch into English. All research participants read and approved the Dutch translations of the interviews presented in my research, and decided either to be identified or to be anonymous. Those who preferred not to be identified asked me to suggest a name, which they would then approve. One research participant also asked me not to indicate gender. Therefore, gender is not discussed. I eliminated or changed the names of places, deaf schools, family structures, etc., to protect my research participants. Background of the Study In September 1990, the Flemish Federation of the Deaf, Fevlado, started a deaf awareness course, called the kadercursus.The Flemish/Dutch word kader means “board,” and cursus is Dutch for “course.” The deaf awareness course was originally intended as a training experience for board members of the deaf clubs associated with Fevlado (Buyens, 1990). The purpose of the course was to generate discussion of different aspects of the deaf community in Flanders and draw comparisons with other countries. (The information provided here on the kadercursus is based on analysis of unpublished and unnumbered reports of the Kadercursus voor Doven, prepared by Studiecentrum Fevlado between 1990 and1994 and documented and collected in the Fevlado archives, Ghent, Belgium.) The kadercursus was announced in Flemish national newspapers, as it was the first time in Flemish deaf history that a deaf aware- VOLUME 152, NO. 1, 2007 AMERICAN ANNALS OF THE DEAF
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Meeting Global Deaf Peers, Visiting Ideal Deaf Places ... - NCRTM

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