Speakers
Description
Despite increasing efforts toward inclusive education, Deaf and hard-of-hearing students continue to encounter barriers in STEM education, mainly due to the limited availability of systematically documented scientific terminology in Greek Sign Language (GSL). This lack of accessible terminological resources restricts conceptual understanding, classroom participation and engagement with scientific knowledge. At the same time, specialised STEM educational resources require multilingual terminological alignment, concept-oriented organisation and accessible multimodal representation (Cabré, 1999; Pavel & Nolet, 2001).
In this study, STEM is used as an umbrella term covering Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, while Natural Sciences are treated as a subcategory within the Sciences. The glossary focuses primarily on terminology from the Natural Sciences included in secondary education STEM curricula.
The paper presents the methodological design and development of a multilingual digital glossary of STEM terminology in GSL. The glossary integrates Greek, English and German scientific terminology with multimodal GSL representations and accessibility-oriented digital lexicographic design, drawing on principles from digital lexicography, terminology studies and inclusive educational design (Jackson, 2013; Gavriilidou & Mavromatidou, 2016).
Greek functions as the language of schooling, English as the dominant language of international scientific communication and German as an additional scientific language with historical importance in European scientific terminology, especially in the Natural and Earth Sciences (Howarth, 2020; Sfoini, 2021).
The glossary adopts a multilingual and multimodal structure in which verbal terminological equivalents are connected with visual and linguistic representations in GSL. Scientific concepts are represented through written terminology, visual support and GSL video representations, enabling accessibility across different linguistic and sensory modalities. These representations include recorded GSL signs, visual conceptual support and pedagogically adapted explanatory material designed to facilitate conceptual accessibility for Deaf learners (Charamba, 2019, 2020).
Methodologically, the glossary development followed a five-phase protocol grounded in contemporary approaches to digital lexicography and terminology management (Klosa, 2013). First, a specialised school corpus was compiled from Greek secondary education Geology-Geography textbooks and analysed using AntConc, processing 18,206 lexical units. Through term extraction and evaluation procedures, 448 core scientific terms and 155 supplementary terms were identified.
The terminology set subsequently underwent empirical multi-criteria evaluation according to six parameters: curricular relevance, scientific validity, corpus frequency, conceptual transparency for learners, representability in GSL and pedagogical accessibility. Quantitative evaluation was supplemented by qualitative feedback from experts in STEM education, GSL and lexicography, allowing iterative refinement of the glossary entries.
The fourth phase involved the lexicographic and terminological structuring of the resource. The macrostructure combines thematic and alphabetical organisation to support efficient retrieval and conceptual navigation. At the microstructural level, each entry integrates multilingual terminological equivalents, educational definitions, conceptual cross-references and multimodal GSL representations informed by the linguistic properties of GSL as a natural language (Sapountzaki, 2015; Sapountzaki et al., 2025).
The final phase focused on accessibility-oriented digital implementation. The platform incorporates high-contrast visual design, adaptable typography, linear navigation and compatibility with assistive technologies, aiming to ensure usability for learners with diverse sensory profiles, including deafblind users. Future validation procedures involving Deaf learners, educators and GSL specialists are also planned in order to evaluate the comprehensibility and pedagogical effectiveness of the glossary.
Overall, the paper contributes to current discussions on inclusive STEM education, multilingual terminology management and digital lexicography by proposing a systematically designed educational glossary integrating multilingual scientific terminology with multimodal sign language representation. The study offers a methodological framework that may inform the development of similar accessible terminological resources in other sign language and educational contexts.