De methodenstrijd, het Congres te Milaan en hun invloed op de communicatiemethode op het Instituut H. D. Guyot te Groningen

Abstract

Abstract During the nineteenth century there was a controversy in Europe and the United States of America, concerning the communication method in the education of the deaf. The main question was whether deaf children should learn spoken language or sign language. The use of the oral method or the manual method in the schools for the deaf was questioned. The climax of the controversy came in 1880, at the “International Congress on the Education of the Deaf” in Milan, in 1880. In this article we focus on an institute for the deaf in the Netherlands, the “Instituut H. D. Guyot” in Groningen, which changed the communication method for teaching deaf children. In a literature review will be clarified what is discussed during the debate at the Congress and how authorative the delegates were, to get a better understanding of the controversy. By using annual reports of the institute and other literature, we have tried to come to a better understanding on how the communication methodology controversy influenced the methods of the H. D. Guyot Institute and what the motives were for the choice for a method. This will be executed by using methods of qualitative research, specifically by implementing the “Grounded theory”.