2025 Volume 28 Issue 1 Pages 16-32
This study focuses on the early and late stages of the introduction of sign language at Mie School for the Deaf and analyzes the language-related community practices at the school from the perspective of legitimate peripheral participation theory. The children at the school learned sign language through participation in the existing sign language community, even though the use of sign language was prohibited. During the period of oral education, deaf children learned to self-evaluate their oral skills while finding their own strategies for participation. As the sign language community outside the school expanded, teachers who were participants in that community helped to bring to the surface and expand the sign language community within the school, leading to the adoption of sign language practices. As oral education declined, sign language was recognized within the school. These findings suggest that the way in which people participate in a community determines language acquisition and specific educational practices. The lack of a perspective that views learning as participation in education for the deaf led to the long continuation of oral education to the exclusion of sign language.
