A Transition to Multimodal Multilingual Practice: From SimCom to Translanguaging

Historically, the field of deaf education has revolved around language planning discourse, but little research been conducted on Deaf and Hard Hearing (DHH) students with additional disabilities as dynamic multilingual multimodal users. The current study focuses process at a school serving DHH Deaf–Blind varied disabilities. A previous Total Communication philosophy was implemented in practice Simultaneous (SimCom) later revised multimodal-multilingual approach goal separating American Sign Language (ASL) English using communication such tactile ASL Augmentative Alternative (AAC). To implement this without reverting back to SimCom, employed action reflect cycles improvement. grounded theory used identify analyze themes over three-year period professional development communication. Triangulated data includes artifacts an online survey staff perceptions—analyzed by coding concepts categories, relating define translanguaging mechanisms attitudes, developing overarching how values after 3 years valuing complete access language. In context multilingual, cycle, shared ideology guided Deaf, DeafBlind, Deaf-Disabled (DDBDD) people use emerged theme that promoted languaging understanding strategies for effective