Documenting Bangla Sign
Profile of Professor M. Tariq Ahsan, PhD
Phone: +880-1711351685Profile Web: http://www.du.ac.bd/faculty/faculty_details/IER/909
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NYMZExIAAAA
Mohammad
Tariq Ahsan has been working at the Institute of Education and Research (IER)
of the University of Dhaka since 2001. Tariq completed his PhD on teacher
preparation for inclusion in education from Monash University, Australia in
2015 under the Australian Government’s prestigious Australian Leadership Awards
(ALAs) proogramme. He did a Master’s from the Flinders University of South
Australia in 2004-05 under the Australian Development Scholarship (ADS)
programme. He has another Master’s on Education and a Bachelor of Education
(Honours) degree with high achievement and merit position from the IER,
University of Dhaka. Tariq served as the Chairman of the Department of Special
Education and Inclusion at IER, University of Dhaka in 2006-2007. Though Dr.
Ahsan’s academic career is based in Bangladesh, he put his footsteps regionally
and internationally in the areas of Educational Change and Pedagogical Reform towards
transformative skills, Digital Transformation in Education, Equity and
Inclusion in education, and Teacher preparation for futuristic education
through his research, teaching, policy reform initiatives, advocacy and
networking. Dr. Ahsan’s diversified career journey represents some unique and
solid contribution in the following areas
Documentation of Bangla Sign Language
Dr.
Ahsan led some pioneering initiatives for documenting Bangla Sign Language in
Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, Bangla Sign Language has many philosophical,
origin-related, and geographical variations. This language has its manual forms
but not documented yet. Since 2002, Dr. Ahsan started working on Sign Language
documentation as a student of IER, University of Dhaka with a team. Later, the
work was carried out by a disability-focused organization (i.e. CDD). Dr. Ahsan
worked as a Task Group Leader for documentation of around 3000 Signs in Bangla.
Later in 2015, Dr. Ahsan conducted an in-depth study on signs/gestures used in
Bangladesh and availability of signs used in Primary curriculum of NCTB.