Centre for Deaf Studies Partner Project wins European Award for Language 2008
Posted on: 08 July 2008
The Centre for Deaf Studies, Trinity College Dublin, is a partner in an EU project, SIGNALL, which has been awarded the European Award for Languages (EAL) 2008. The SIGNALL project’s aim is to increase the awareness of Deaf Culture and Sign Language in the EU.
A central focus of the project is to provide guidelines to employers on how to better integrate Deaf employees into the workplace. The Centre for Deaf Studies was involved in the making of a DVD documentary The Significance of Silence and guide for employers called Understanding Deaf People and Deaf Culture which were launched last Spring.
The EAL award is designed to recognise creative ways to improve the quality of language teaching, motivate students, and make the best of available resources. Award-winning initiatives serve as a potential source of inspiration for projects in other contexts, languages and even other countries. Projects are selected based on their innovation, effectiveness and replicability. The award is coordinated by the European Commission and managed on a decentralised basis by each member state.
The Centre for Deaf Studies is now a full partner in the SIGNALL II project which runs from 2008-2010. This project aims to develop a course that focuses on how society views deafness in contrast with how Deaf people see themselves (‘Perspectives on Deafness”), offered on-line as a distance learning course, as part of the Centre for Deaf Studies suite of undergraduate courses.
“We are delighted to have been part of the very successful SIGNALL project and now a full partner in SIGNALL II, which is concerned with digitising and expanding the Centre’s Perspectives on Deafness course to incorporate a strong EU dimension.” stated Dr Lorraine Leeson, Director of the Trinity Centre for Deaf Studies. “The Centre is also working on an accompanying report that focuses on providing an overview of the literature and some new empirically based data from our partner nations in a reader friendly manner, which will serve both as a project report and as an e-volume to accompany the digitised content.”
The Chairman of the project, Haaris Sheikh is Chief Executive of Interesource Group (Ireland) Limited, the promoters of SIGNALL II stated “As 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, I am hoping that in Ireland the Deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing communities can come together and recognise the diversity of the different cultures. It is a great opportunity to be working with best-practice educational establishments such as the TCD Centre for Deaf Studies in bringing education and our aims to a new height.”
Other partners of the project include the Finnish Association of the Deaf, Grant Advisor from the