Deaf Ways of Education 59
or in a mainstream setting (although a small minority of young adults in this group
were educated in Total Communication programs using what is called ‘ nederlands
met Gebaren,’ or ‘Signed Dutch’)” (2002, p. 75). In 1998, the first bilingual pro-
gram was set up in a Flemish deaf school (De Weerdt, vanhecke, van Herreweghe,
& vermeerbergen, 2002), yet “most deaf children are still educated orally today,
although signs are no longer banned and interest in bilingual- bicultural education
is growing rapidly” (van Herreweghe, 2002, p. 75). Three Flemish deaf people have
been certified to teach deaf students, and a few are currently enrolled in education
classes, but larger numbers of deaf people are either teaching sign language courses
or working as teacher assistants in deaf schools.
Deaf clubs in Flanders were established close to deaf schools in the second half
of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Although deaf people
participated on the boards of these schools, clergy from the schools played a larger
role in the administration and the running of the school (Raemdonck & Scheiris,
2007). Flemish deaf people were active on the board of the former national Deaf
Federation, navekados. yet the establishment of the federation was rooted in and
strongly dominated by Catholic paternalism (Raemdonck & Scheiris, 2007). only
since 1996, when deaf leaders began to experience ideal deaf places, have all board
members of Fevlado been deaf (De Clerck, 2005).
In 1980, the Flemish Federation of the Deaf established a “sign committee”
to develop and promote Signed Dutch. In the 1990s, two research projects on
Flemish Sign Language were set up by hearing researchers (van Herreweghe, 1995;
vermeerbergen, 1996), and deaf people visited and received training at deaf cen-
ters around the world. Following international tendencies in favor of natural sign
languages, in 1997 Fevlado officially decided to promote and teach Flemish Sign
Language instead of Signed Dutch (van Herreweghe & vermeerbergen, 2004). The
first Flemish Sign Language dictionary was published in 2004 (van Mulders, 2004).RESEARCH METHoD AnD AnALySIS
Because the phenomenon of deaf empowerment as it is experienced in life stories
has not received systematic empirical scrutiny, I have conducted an exploratory qual-
itative case study (Stebbins, 2001; yin, 1994). In my study, the participants were asked
whether coming into contact with deaf culture was a turning point in their lives. A pos-
itive response to this question was a prerequisite for participation in the study. In eth-
nographic interviews (Spradley, 1997), Flemish deaf people were asked to reflect on
key moments in their lives concerning their deaf empowerment, identity, and agency.
My recruitment and sampling methods included both the use of a flyer that was
posted in a regional deaf club (by means of e-mail and deaf club magazines) and
snowball sampling (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). An initial core group of deaf peo-
ple recognized as leaders (Ladd, 2003) and who had already spread deaf cultural
rhetoric in the Flemish deaf community and society named other deaf people who
had experienced the same phenomenon in their lives. As a deaf participant in deaf
activism, I knew that deaf role models tend to know each other and exchange expe-
riences (De Clerck, 2005).