Negotiating nationalism and identity: Cross-comparative analysis of deaf early childhood education in Japan, France, and United States

This proposal involves members of a research team who are conducting a comparative ethnographic study of kindergartens for the deaf in France, Japan, and the US.  Our study is in a sense doubly ethnographic, as we are studying enculturation into Deaf culture in Japan, France, and the US within the larger national cultures and socio-political contexts. In this session, we present the study’s method, show videoclips from our study (in the classrooms and panel discussions from teachers, administrators, and parents), and share early findings.  Our central research question focuses how kindergarten schools for the deaf function as sites for acculturation/enculturation negotiate identity into both Deaf culture and national cultures.  Another central theme of the session examines various micro/macro perspectives via diverse languacultures (whether it is their national language or sign language) on Deaf Early Childhood Education.  Because the great majority of deaf children have hearing parents, acculturation of deaf children into Deaf culture occurs largely outside the family, and the enculturation process usually starts in school.  Thus, schools and the pedagogy of language (which is inseparable to culture; thus, languaculture) plays an important and delicate role to the social construction of deafness; as such, this paper explores the ways that these two – schools and language/culture –plays a crucial role in the identity construction on what it means to be deaf in three countries both on a micro-level (deaf community/culture) but also on a macro-level (nationalism).