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Effective school leaders develop the capacity to connect with their staff, students, and educational stakeholders to form bonds of respect and trust, and to foster a sense of efficacy in their practice and the practice of others. This phenomenological investigation aims to better understand how school principals interpret the influence of their sociocultural backgrounds and how they make meaning of their lived experiences as school leaders in relation to that influence. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, this qualitative study investigates how five rural school leaders consciously perceive and make making of the influence that their sociocultural backgrounds have on their leadership styles and strategies. Findings from this inquiry were organized into four thematic units: the advantages of being local, the context of the community in school-community relations, the leaders' "application of the school" with stakeholders, and the leaders' personal identities. Focusing on their lived experiences, participants provided insights into connections between their local identities as Appalachian leaders and their ability to relate to the diversity of stakeholders in their school communities.

Deaf teachers around the world have folk models and beliefs that reflect their understanding of what deaf children need to learn in order to develop healthy identities as deaf people. In this research we report what teachers from England, the USA and Mexico have told us about using creative signing with deaf children. Themes emerging from our data suggest that some deaf folk beliefs vary across national boundaries but that assumptions about deaf ways to foster learning are remarkably similar in all three countries. This suggests that there is something quintessentially deaf about these assumptions that exist alongside formal training or national heritage. In interviews deaf teachers told us that deaf children learn by being engaged, by participating in the group and by using sign language for themselves--and that signed narratives facilitate all three of these learning strategies. A second emergent theme covers the teachers' beliefs about specific abilities and knowledge that deaf children need to learn, and that their teachers help them learn. In all three countries, teachers reported using signed stories to help the children learn to communicate and interact, to have fun with signing and to see what is possible for deaf people to achieve. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This article investigates the ways in which an experienced deaf teacher is able to extend the discourse in his classroom and enable his students to participate. We saw that he employs several approaches, some but not all of which depend on his native competence in ASL. Further research with other native signing teachers could lead to the identification of common features of their discourse, both those that are ASL specific and those that are more general. In addition, certain issues and questions warrant further investigation. One of these is persistence. We need to understand better how teachers use language to build persistence, its relationship to language fluency, and its role in questioning in the larger signing community beyond classrooms. In particular, the cognitive level of the initial verb (e.g., tell, explain, describe, compare, create, etc.) used in questioning may moderate persistent questioning.

Recognizing that knowledge about other cultures and their responses to deafness is limited in the United States, focuses on rituals that are not widely known to North Americans. Offers descriptions of Mexican rituals to advance an understanding of the way the meaning of deafness is interpreted in different cultures. (Author/VWL)

Describes a residential school classroom for deaf third graders. A critical school skill, the ability to engage in literacy activities, grows from the ability to exploit American Sign Language-based (ASL) literacy practices, which are indigenous to the culture of signing deaf people and critical for literacy learning when ASL is the medium of instruction. (Author/SLD)

Issues in deaf culture and literacy are addressed, including literacy versus reading and writing, the nature of deaf culture, the relationship between culture (particularly deaf culture) and literacy, the relationship between literacy and face-to-face communication, and application of theory to practice. (DB)