Making Persian visible: teachers’ visual-linguistic strategies for deaf literacy in Iranian elementary schools

Teaching literacy to deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students is particularly challenging in education systems shaped by spoken-language norms. In Iran, where Persian literacy underpins formal schooling, this study explores how elementary teachers make Persian literacy accessible to DHH students in Grades 1–3. Drawing on qualitative interviews with teachers in specialized Deaf schools across Iran, the study examines literacy instruction under resource-constrained and hearing-centered conditions. Inductive thematic analysis generated four themes: integrated multisensory and experiential literacy instruction, contextualized and unified literacy instruction, hierarchical skills instruction, and specialized materials for DHH learners. Findings show that teachers combine sign language, lip-reading, gesture, real objects, enactment, structured sequencing, and visually oriented resources to make Persian linguistically visible and conceptually meaningful. Rather than following a single instructional route, they continually adapt, repair, and supplement a curriculum not fully aligned with DHH learners' communicative realities. The study argues that these practices constitute a locally grounded visual-linguistic pedagogy shaped by both professional creativity and systemic constraint. It contributes to Deaf literacy scholarship by foregrounding an underrepresented Iranian elementary-school context and showing how teachers construct accessible literacy pathways within a phonocentric educational system.