SignTeach, Results of a European project for and by Sign Language Teachers

Luigi Lerose, United Kingdom / Radka Novakova, Czech Rebublic

Lesico 2017, Sunday 15th October 2017, Basel

SignTeach was a European project, funded by Erasmus+. It was a 3-year project, the starting date was September 2014. In the project, 25 people from 8 European countries worked together to develop a website with information for Sign Language Teachers. In this presentation, we want to present some of the results of research activities that were part of the project: • The SignTeach Survey. At the moment (December 2015), almost 250 sign language teachers answered the questions of our online SignTeach Survey. In this Survey, we asked questions about the training and accreditation of sign language teachers, questions about their working situation, and about their wishes and recommendations. In this presentation, we will present the data and our analysis of the results. • SignTeach interview. For the SignTeach project, partners interviewed appr. 20 experts in sign language teaching, in 8 European countries. We asked questions about the strengths and weaknesses of sign language teaching in their country, about best practices and barriers, quality standards and accreditation. Last but not least, we asked for recommendations: what needs to be done, at a national and/or European level, to further professionalize sign language teaching and the training of sign language teachers, in Europe. In this presentation, we will report the results of these interviews.