Our careful analysis has shown that - in Europe we lack focused knowledge about the use of national sign languages in education; - in Europe there is no overview available on forms of sign bilingual education; - there is pressing need to support teachers who work bilingually with a signed language by enabling them professional development; - in the 3 German-speaking countries there is a great demand for concepts, lesson plans, didactic manuals and methodological guides for teachers. Some of these aspects are known in some regional or national contexts but they are scarcely documented and are not internationally accessible knowledge. The strategic partnership De-Sign Bilingual unites 5 specialized schools and 4 universities and aims at creating the following results: a) Develop and implement sign bilingual teaching concepts and materials. b) Enable international and cross-regional cooperation of ley actors in sign bilingual pedagogy and make them sustainable; c) Make local knowledge and competences available nationally and internationally; d) Create a map of sign bilingual practice in Europe (28 countries); e) Document the most innovative models of sign bilingual practice in Europe, describe them in a way that is relevant for educators and teachers and make that information available in a book in order to start systematic, transnational transfer of knowledge in the area of European Deaf education; f) Organize a conference in order to make project results available to teachers, school authorities, ministries of education and researchers. Activities of De-Sign Bilingual: 1) Within the strategic partnership “De-Sign Bilingual” a select group of sign language competent (Deaf and hearing) teachers from the 3 German-speaking countries will participate in transnational work meetings. In the course of 2 years seven such meetings will be held in the cities of participating schools in order to reflect on, discuss and create bilingual teaching concepts, materials and lesson plans. The results of the teachers’ working groups (lesson plans, didactic and methodical concepts) will be made freely available on the website www.gehoerlos-lernen.at. In each participating school there will be one teacher/multiplier who relates the creative work processes as well as results to the remaining members of the educational staff in small workshops and information events. 2) Survey, documentation and publication of „Sign Bilingual Practice in Europe“. In work package 2 we will create instruments for a survey on sign bilingual practice in 28 EU member states without having to travel to all countries to collect data. The survey will be a cooperation between all 9 partners, i.e. academic as well as school educators. Academic partners are responsible for the dissemination of the questionnaire, the data collection and the analysis as well as publication. Data will come directly from schools/teachers and will be systematically analysed by academic standards and with academic means in order to create a Map of Sign Bilingual Practice in Europe. 3) Qualitative survey and documentation of „European Sign Bilingual Best Practice“. The third activity will focus on examples of European sign bilingual best practice: they will be qualitatively researched, analysed and described. Prior to publication the results will be discussed with the participating teachers (see activity 1), then they will be triangulated with the quantitative data (see work package 2) and with existing scholarly publications. The results will be published in 2 books (in German and English). 4) Dissemination. The results of the 2-year-strategic partnership will be made available to the public/to colleagues/to researchers/to key players in several ways: There will be multipliers in all participating schools, plus 2 book publications and a campaign on the open access platform www.gehoerlos-lernen.at. Finally, results and resources will be disseminated through a closing conference on "Creating Sign Bilingual Best Practice in Schools". For national educational systems bilingual competencies and materials mean that inclusion becomes feasible. Through professionalization of teachers who work with a sign language the quality of education will be improved significantly. For key players, supranational institutions and European players (commission and parliament) the Intellectual Outputs of this strategic partnership will support informed decisions and evidence-based policymaking.