Irish Sign Language STEM Glossary Project
On 15th February, Minister John Halligan Minister announced Science Foundation Ireland investment of €4.4M in 41 STEM education and public engagement projects, to improve public understanding of STEM and to support education initiatives for under-represented groups. One of the projects receiving funding is the Irish Sign Language STEM Glossary project, led by Dr Elizabeth Mathews from the School of Inclusive and Special Education in DCU Institute of Education.
Irish Sign Language was recently recognised by the Government of Ireland. It is a complex language with a rich history but, like any language, there is sometimes a need for new terms to reflect advances in technology and science. The absence of agreed signs for technical STEM vocabulary can make the teaching of STEM subjects to Deaf and Hard of Hearing learners difficult. It can also create problems for those working in Irish Sign Language interpreting. As well as this, it limits Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in accessing mainstream public engagement science events such as those associated with the recent Science Rising or Science Week campaigns.
This project is the first step in solving this problem. Dr. Mathews and her team will create an open-access online ISL glossary for maths terms targeting learners at primary and post-primary school, their parents and their teachers. The glossary is the main output of this project, but a second important output is a project-plan for how this glossary might be grown to include a variety of other subject-specific glossaries for STEM across all education levels.
For further information on this project, contact Dr Elizabeth Mathews at Elizabeth.mathews@dcu.ie
This project is funded by the Science Foundation Ireland Discover Programme.