The enculturation of a hearing family with a deaf child: We are all learning to sign

This study explored the sign language learning experiences and contexts of a hearing family who decided to learn and use American Sign Language (ASL) with their young deaf child. Multiple informants, including family members and professional participants, and multiple methods of data collection and analysis provided accounts of experiences that were examined within the frameworks of family ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) and Vygotskian theory (Vygotsky; 1962, 1978) about language learning in the zone of proximal development.;Previous research regarding sign language learning has looked at language learning within the deaf child, but has not investigated the language learning context of family members who are hearing.;This study identified a densely connected network of formal and informal service providers that both facilitated and constrained the sign language learning of the child and her family. Even these motivated parents encountered a system of service delivery that essentially ignored the profoundly social process of language learning for both the deaf child who was learning a first language and the family members who were trying to learn a second one. Most of the child's communication-related care in the first year was focused on her hearing loss. Despite the mobilization of effort in response to the child's profound hearing loss, very little of the advice given by most professionals concerned the child's language learning, and even less advice concerned how the family should and could learn sign language.;The persons most influential in helping the family decide how to communicate with the child included the hearing daughter of deaf parents whom the family met through their church, a speech-language pathologist who provided early intervention services in the home, and a preschool teacher for hearing impaired children. While the child's parents, an aunt, and her grandparents have taken a sign language class, other family members rely on the child's mother to provide them with the language needed for communication with the child during their infrequent visits.;Strategies for improving family sign language learning, including applications from second language learning research and immersion programs, are discussed.