The CEFR holds much promise for innovation in sign language teaching and learning, as it is based in conceptions of the language learner as a social agent who develops general and particular communicative competences while achieving everyday goals. This is also known as an action-oriented teaching approach, which is in keeping with current trends in language education, specifically in seeking to address the needs of parent learners. Data is reported from a recent eight-month study of piloting an online teaching model for parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. A main theme that arose in this study was the role of mediation in terms of alleviating various barriers for participants, reducing otherness, and facilitating the linguistic and cultural dimensions of parents’ online ASL learning through cognitive and relational means.

Speaker
Prof. Kristin Snoddon
Toronto Metropolitan University
Kristin Snoddon is Associate Professor with the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her research and professional experience includes collaborative work with deaf communities in developing sign language and early literacy programming for young deaf children and their parents. Her longstanding program of research has focused on developing a parent American Sign Language curriculum that is aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Additionally, she analyzes policy issues related to inclusive education, sign language rights and acquisition planning for ASL. Her newest book is Critical Perspectives in Deaf Education (with Joanne Weber; Multilingual Matters, 2021).