Deaf Students' Experience of Engagement in a Mediated Education: It Is What It Is

Abstract

The purpose of this comparative case study (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) was to gain insights into and greater understanding of the perceived impacts of the policy and practice of educational interpreters on the school engagement experiences of American deaf signing youth. This study examined educational policy as practice from multiple levels of analysis; vertical, horizontal, and transversal, by tracing the line of inquiry in these guiding questions. At the macro-level: What is the state level policy discourse informing the practice of educational interpreting; including qualifications, hiring practices, supervision of the interpreter? At the meso-level: How do the local education agencies appropriate the provision of educational interpreters, including educational team decisions related to the individualized educational program? At the micro-level: How do deaf signing youth and their parents experience educational engagement in mediated educational settings?

A multimethod approach to data gathering lead to a review of archives, inventory of documents, public records, observations, and interviews to trace the actor networks across scales from macro to micro. Educational interpreters in the study setting are required to meet minimum performance standards but are not included in the student’s Individualized Education Program as policy requires. Through interviews and observations of three deaf of deaf high school students who experience both direct and mediated instruction, the perceptions of school engagement were examined. Deaf student participants in this study exhibit a resigned, fatalistic, ‘it is, what it is’ perspective on the educational interpreting services they receive in their mainstream classes; however, choose to remain in the setting in order to be exposed to the hearing world. Findings indicate that the policy and practice of educational interpreters does not support the full educational engagement of signing deaf students in mediated classrooms.