How Deaf Women Construct Teaching

This ethnographic study looks at how five Deaf women who teach American Sign Language (ASL) come to construct teaching, language & culture, and gender. This study also examines how these five women bridge two cultures, that of the dominant mainstream and of the Deaf, through their teaching ASL & Deaf Culture. These issues were explored through videotaped interviews and participant-observations in their ASL classes. Interviews and observations reveal their unique experiences as Deaf individuals living as daughters, students, mothers, teachers, and partners in social relationships. These roles are both at once similar & dissimilar. Their lived experiences as Deaf women affect how they teach, how they perceive hearing people, and how they understand language, culture, and gender.