In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

—Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

For some time, the American educational system has been at the center of legislators’ attention; however, Special Education Services have not been a top priority because other educational issues have been prioritized (Wolfe, 2002). Although the American public-school system has embraced the goal of educating all children, how do educators and school administrators know their goal impacts deaf students? How will deaf students have access to information and communication in their educational settings? How will the educational system ensure that the hearing students and deaf students accept each other as equal counterparts? And perhaps, most basically, how do educators and school administrators know that deaf children are linguistically prepared for mainstream classrooms?

Ideally, all children should have full access to language at an early age and not be deprived of language, especially at a young age. However, for deaf children this is often not the case. Because many deaf children are born into hearing, nonsigning families, are they ushered into the education system with limited language (Freel et al., 2011; Kushalnagar et al., 2010; Schick et al., 2013; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). In particular, there is a growing call for deaf children to be placed in comprehensive bilingual and bicultural educational environments (Hall, 2017; Hall et al., 2017). In the past, signed language immersion often occurred through educational placement in residential schools for the deaf. Today, however, most deaf students are placed in mainstreamed settings in their local schools. Therefore, it is imperative that educators, including sign language interpreters who work in K–12 educational settings, better understand the implications resulting from deaf students’ mainstreaming experiences. Critically, that includes a better understanding of educational interpreting and the education system that has been established for deaf students.

Brief History of American Special Education Laws and Deaf Education

One of the earliest legislative acts in the United States that provide educational opportunities for deaf students goes as far as back as 1817 at the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 2006). The focus in the nineteenth century was mainly on providing financial support and resources to asylums, hospitals, and institutions. Children with disabilities were still not receiving appropriate educational services, and Congress decided to take action and do something about some serious problems within the American educational system (National Association of the Deaf, 2002). During the early twentieth century, vocational rehabilitation began to emerge with a primary focus on counseling and job placement for persons with disabilities (e.g., Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973).

In 1975, the U.S. Congress passed the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), previously known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. However, this was not the first legislation supporting deaf education. The IDEA put forth regulations that emphasized the following four purposes:

1.Ensure that all children with disabilities have access to a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for employment and independent living;

2.Ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and their parents are protected;

3.Assist states, localities, educational service agencies, and federal agencies to pay for the education of all children with disabilities;

4.Assess and ensure the effectiveness of efforts to educate children with disabilities. (National Association of the Deaf, 2002, p. 56)

Most states have added their own laws and regulations in addition to these IDEA standards, which cover children from 3 to 21 years old. Children younger than 3 years are covered by different provisions under the IDEA.

The Definition of “Least Restrictive Environment” Controversy

Although lawmakers may have the best intentions, the “least restrictive environment” (LRE) principle has been controversial and has frequently been misinterpreted by a variety of stakeholders. For example, some people believe that mainstreaming a deaf child is considered the LRE, whereas others argue that a bilingual and bicultural school for deaf children provides them with the LRE. The latter view is based, at least in part, on the fact that deaf children have full access to visual language and to Deaf culture and to get information via direct instruction where everyone is communicating visually (i.e., signing American Sign Language [ASL]) at all times at a bilingual–bicultural school.

For deaf students, inclusion may not be the best education solution. For some, deaf students may need something that public school can rarely offer—being in a visual-language rich environment, having full access to one visual language (or more) and to a fully bilingual/bicultural or even multilingual/multicultural education. In fact, in recent decades, a growing body of research has suggested that providing signed language interpreters in K–12 classrooms may create a restrictive environment or an inappropriate education. For example, studies have shown that interpreters are faced with a multitude of decisions as they work (Smith, 2013) within educational teams that have diverse expectations of interpreters as related service providers (Fitzmaurice, 2018). Public schools that have the best of intentions may still unintentionally ostracize deaf children (Ramsey, 1997), and signed language interpreter-mediated education may impede the cognitive development of deaf children (Schick, 2004). Educational interpreters are often novices themselves and thus not qualified to achieve the intended goals of interpreter-mediated education, should it be, in fact, possible (Jones, 2004; Russell, 2007; Winston, 2004). Deaf children thrive in a fully accessible environment. Some school administrators and parents believe that providing an educational interpreter for the deaf student is sufficient and the educational interpreter can be the deaf students’ language model (Ramsey, 1997; Smith, 2013). The belief about interpreter-mediated education is increasingly being called into question (De Meulder & Haualand, 2019).

Two of the most significant parts of the IDEA are the Act’s “free appropriate public education” (FAPE) and “LRE.” IDEA requires that states provide an FAPE to all children with disabilities (National Association of the Deaf, 2002). Wolfe (2002) further explains,

The language of the FAPE requirement does not provide detailed guidelines as to how to measure an “appropriate” education. Providing a free education seems intuitive, but what exactly rises to the level of an appropriate education under the IDEA? (p. 1633)

In the case of deaf students who are mainstreamed, who decides what an “appropriate” education is for them?

Individualized Educational Plan

From 1975, with the enactment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, schools were required to file an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for each student with a disability. The amendments made to the IDEA in 1997 specified who the IEP team were and their access to IEP documentation. The IDEA Improvement Act, in 2004, eliminated the requirement of having benchmarks and short-term objectives in IEPs and allowed multiple-year IEPs on a selective basis (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 2006).

Decisions related to deaf students’ educational placements are usually made during IEP meetings. In other words, “the IEP is the manner in which a school system evaluates a child and then makes a placement decision under the IDEA” (Wolfe, 2002, p. 1635). The IEP team usually consists of the parents of the child, regular and special education teachers, and other individuals when appropriate (National Association of the Deaf, 2002; Wolfe, 2002). The purpose of the IEP is to create a clear plan for the deaf child and ensure that a variety of parties will work together to accomplish the needs and goals of that child. The IEP meetings are where the IEP team determines the placement of the deaf child. Oliva and Lytle (2014) advocate that educational interpreters should not be interpreting during IEP meetings; instead, they should be invited to IEP meetings and serve on the team. Outsider certified interpreters should be hired to interpret IEP meetings (Oliva & Lytle, 2014). The IEP team decides the type of interpretation, translation, or transliteration for the deaf and hard of hearing child (National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc., 2018).

Who Makes Decisions Regarding Students’ Individualized Educational Plan?

The central part of Public Law 94–142 is the IEP as a written document that describes:

1.The student’s present levels of functioning;

2.annual goals and short-term objectives of the program;

3.services to be provided and the extent of regular programming;

4.starting date and expected duration of services; and

5.evaluation procedures and criteria for monitoring progress. (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 2006, p. 17)

Written IEP documents must include instructional goals that are measurable, observable, and based on the student’s performance.

Under the IDEA, although some professionals are identified as a “Related Service,” the law does not require them to serve on the IEP team or participate in IEP meetings. Educational interpreters are such related service providers and interact daily with deaf students. But, by placing interpreters in the category of “related services,” educational interpreters need to be adequately prepared professionally to serve as equal partners representing communication expertise within the educational team. According to Ysseldyke and Algozzine (2006), the 1997 IDEA Amendments (also known as Public Law 105–17) made some changes to the composition of the IEP team. In addition to those mentioned previously, the general education teacher must be present and participate in most IEP meetings. Furthermore, a member of the IEP team must be an expert in evaluation and know how to communicate the evaluation results and translate them into instructional objectives (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 2006).

The IEP must be reviewed and updated at least once every year. In developing an IEP for a deaf child,

the IEP team must consider the communication needs of the child, including his or her academic level, language and communication needs, and opportunities for direct communication with peers and professional personnel in the child’s language and communication mode. (National Association of the Deaf, 2002, p. 61)

The written IEP document should also include the deaf student’s language or communication preference and identify the services that will be provided to accommodate their language/communication. Educational interpreters, then, are a related service, which forms the focus of this chapter.

Owing to state and federal laws, it is usually school personnel who write IEPs for students with disabilities (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 2006). Educational interpreters are usually with the deaf students on a regular basis, if not most of the time. However, by federal law, they are not required to serve on the IEP team. This chapter addresses the question of what educational interpreters think about the educational placement process for deaf students?

Deaf Students and Educational Interpreting in the United States

Moores (2009) explains that IDEA has had a significant influence on the decline of residential schools for the deaf and contributed to a growing demand for more educational interpreters in public schools. Synder and Dillow (2011) report that there are approximately 350,000 deaf children in the United States. Approximately 86.4% are mainstreamed, yet only 23% of them receive services under IDEA. Shaver et al. (2013) found that of 870 deaf students aged 13–16, approximately 51% of them were mainstreamed, and 61.9% used sign language (in both regular and special schools). However, we do not know exactly how many deaf students actually use educational interpreters in their schools.

A growing number of studies examine various complex considerations present in interpreter-mediated education. Some critical considerations include the following:

1.What is the significance of the signed language fluency of students?

2.Are interpreters conduits relaying utterances from one language to another?

3.What is the relevance of incidental learning in an academic context?

4.How effective is direct versus interpreter-mediated instruction?

In educational settings, the main goal of providing interpreting services is often thought to be to facilitate communication inside and perhaps outside the classroom (Petty & Kolvitz, 1996; Schick et al., 2006). A multitude of studies examine the linguistic and social considerations faced by educational interpreters (De Meulder & Haualand, 2019; Napier & Barker, 2004; Roy & Metzger, 2014; Russell & Winston, 2014). According to the World Federation for the Deaf (2017), “95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who usually don’t know sign language.” If deaf children come to school with no intact signed language, they are not viable consumers of interpretation until they have acquired the language of the classroom. Expecting deaf students to learn content without having linguistic access to content¹ has been described as a failed educational system (Johnson et al., 1989). Furthermore, studies have begun to compare direct versus mediated education (Berge & Thomassen, 2016; Kurz, 2004; Kurz et al., 2015).

To begin to consider this issue, it is essential to understand what interpretation is (or is not). Interpreting was once thought to be a simple relaying of messages from utterances in one language into a second language. However, sociolinguistic research and discursive studies have shown that interpretation is far more complex than this simplistic expectation. Utterances in one language (and the related culture) are not simple to translate into a second language (with a separate cultural context), and every utterance is subject to multiple considerations by the interpreter, often resulting in renditions that contain, by linguistic necessity, gains and losses as compared with the source utterance (Gile, 1995).

Because discourse occurs in context, interpreting various genres of discourse within interaction is subject to a multitude of pragmatic and sociolinguistic considerations. Empirical studies demonstrate that at least some considerations that occur in interpreter-mediated discourse include the management of the interactional discourse (Metzger, 1999; Roy, 1989, 1999; Wadensjö, 1998), including the implications for whether an interpreter takes or yields turns on behalf of deaf or hearing teachers or students. Additionally, culturally constructed discourse may rely on the acoustic or visual social construction of a classroom. Visually oriented classrooms are typically organized with the goal that participants are able to see one another, whereas auditorily oriented classrooms presuppose that participants are able to see and hear information simultaneously (as when talking about a map or physical mechanism). In this example, direct instruction with deaf students typically organizes seating in a semicircle for visual accessibility, whereas mediated classrooms more often seat students in rows one behind another, impeding visual access to classmates. These are considerations that impact the accessibility of both academic content and incidental learning in classrooms (see Berge & Thomassen, 2016; Fleetwood & Metzger, 1990, forthcoming; Winston, 1994, 2004).

Further, where auditorily oriented interaction may have linguistic and cultural competence related to responses to sounds (i.e., to devices beeping or ringing, or to a chair falling or a classmate sneezing), visually oriented interaction not only may not, but may find that dual individual input is organized sequentially. For example, a teacher might wait for students to read through a presentation slide fully prior to teaching about it.

Although educational interpreting is often guided by the directive to “facilitate communication,” it is not clear what “communication” entails. Some focus on the critical nature of incidental learning within education (Fleetwood & Metzger, 1990; Oliva, 2004; Schick, 2004). Education is far more encompassing than simply providing a platform for academic learning. All children in a mainstream group, be it a hearing-centric mainstream or a deaf-centric mainstream (Fleetwood & Metzger, 1990, forthcoming), have access to information from which to observe the reactions of others and on the basis of which decisions are made.

Subsequently, those decisions are subject to a response, and this process contributes to the development of Theory of Mind (see Schick, 2004), a social–cognitive skill in which one develops a sense of what others are thinking and an understanding of others’ responses to the world. This is a part of the context in which a deaf child might feel a part of a whole, or isolated within a group (Oliva, 2004). These matters are all part of the interpretation process, and further research on how and to what extent educational interpreters are able to incorporate this type of acoustic information and how it is or is not received and processed by students is a critical piece of educational success and should therefore be a part of educational placement decisions. Researchers point out that where students learning directly have visual access to the classroom around them, students learning in an interpreter-mediated classroom are looking most of the time at the interpreter, and, consequently, their view of and interaction with students and teachers in the classroom are necessarily limited (see Berge, 2003; Berge & Thomassen, 2016). The development of Theory of Mind, and, in fact, of any of the social skills implicitly acquired in school, is at risk in mediated education.

The question of learning through direct or mediated instruction is a critical consideration. Several studies have found that direct instruction is more effective than mediated instruction. For example, Kurz et al. (2015) found that 19 deaf students had greater comprehension of the content where teachers used signed language in a direct instruction environment compared with those who were placed in an interpreter-mediated environment with a hearing teacher even if the educational interpreter was highly qualified. However, not all deaf students are the same.

Interestingly, Kurz (2004) found that deaf children of hearing parents performed best in a direct communication environment compared to the interpreted education environment; whereas the deaf children of deaf parents performed well in both a direct communication environment and interpreted education environment. She also found that increased experience of deaf students with working with educational interpreters (i.e., number of years) had no direct impact on improving their comprehension of the content in interpreted educational settings. This study supports the contention that deaf children require an intact signed language prior to a successful interpreter-mediated educational experience. This is key, given the assumption that deaf children of deaf parents are more likely to be fluent users of ASL than deaf children of hearing parents who did not know ASL prior to the birth of their deaf child. This critical consideration needs more research.

Fortunately, some studies contribute to a further understanding of signed language interpreted education. However, the field lacks research that justifies current practice. It also lacks clear guidelines, based on evidential findings, to guide the work of interpreters in education. Stuckless et al. (1989) were among the first to form a national task force on educational interpreting. Their report was a descriptive one, however, without an examination of the outcomes of the practices being described. Some would argue that educational interpreting requires skills that are distinct from, not consistent with, interpreters who do not work in educational settings (Fleetwood & Metzger, 1990, forthcoming; Saur, 1992).

Further, research has also been increasingly addressing the perspectives of stakeholders in education, including not only Deaf students’ perspectives (Kurz & Langer, 2004; Napier & Barker, 2004; Stern, 2008), but also those of various teachers, interpreters, and interpreter coordinators and school administrators (Fitzmaurice, 2017, 2018). These studies show that there are no clear standards guiding educational signed language interpreters,

In addition, a growing trend within the field at large calls for greater attention toward the role of signed language interpreting services for accessibility to social institutions such as education (De Meulder & Haualand, 2019). Where sign language interpreting services occur, the appearance of access may mask a very different student experience, so much so that Metzger & Fleetwood (2004) call for the development of evidence-based prescriptive standards in lieu of descriptive guidelines for educational interpreters working in the United States.

Clearly, interpreter-mediated education is a complex process that is still being studied, and more research is needed, as are policies to guide practice. For the purpose of this chapter, let us return to the topic of IEPs and closely examine the issues related to IEPs and the educational placement process for deaf students.

Method

The purpose of this study was to collect demographic and relevant information related to the role of the educational interpreter in the IEP team, in the United States. In addition, data was collected on the subject of whom educational interpreters report to, whether they are allowed to share their professional opinions outside of IEPs or not, and who makes the educational placement decisions at their schools. Further information was sought in regard to whether the educational interpreter agreed with the educational placement decisions or not, and also what kind of professional development educational interpreters believe they need to improve their skills related to educational interpreting.

This chapter will focus on whether educational interpreters are invited to participate in IEP meetings and whether educational interpreters are asked for their professional opinions outside of IEP meetings. Finally, it will examine the question of whom educational interpreters directly report to when sharing their professional perspectives on deaf students’ progress. This study was approved by the Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT’s) Office of Institutional Research.

Participants and Data Collection

A survey was created using Qualtrics, an online survey tool, and sent to educational interpreter members of the National Association of Educational Interpreters (NAIE) in the United States. At the time the survey was sent out, NAIE had 285 members. The link to the survey and information was also posted on the NAIE’s Facebook page and shared by the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf’s (RID’s) special interest group, Interpreters in Educational Instructional Settings (IEIS), and a few other educational interpreting related Facebook discussion pages. Because this was a voluntary response type of sampling, it is difficult to determine how many people saw the survey link.

The survey was open for eight weeks, and 275 educational interpreters voluntarily completed it. Not all of the participants answered every question. The response rate contrasted with NAIE’s members, represents a 96% response rate, excluding those who might have completed the survey through Facebook’s shared pages. This is a very high response rate for survey research (Creswell, 2002). Participation was voluntary, and no payment was offered to those who completed the survey. The participants agreed to take the survey after having read the disclaimer and registered their consent.

Instrument and Data Analysis

The survey consisted of 50 questions that included closed, multiple choice, and open-ended questions. It was divided into several sections, including demographic information, respondents’ participation on IEP teams, their views on the educational placement process, whom they report to, who makes educational placement decisions at their school, and their need for more professional development opportunities to improve their work as educational interpreters. Analysis was done through the Qualtrics statistical tool as part of the survey report. Qualtrics automatically performed a statistical analysis, with the statistical processes built into the electronic platform.

Results

Participant Demographics

Table 1 presents a summary of the demographics of the participants, including ethnicity, age groups, their first language, years of educational interpreting experience, academic degrees, certifications, the types of educational settings they work or have worked in, the language or communication system they use in their interpretation, and the number of deaf and hard of hearing student(s) at their schools. Not all of the participants chose to respond to each question—some of the answer spaces were left blank. Some participants chose more than one answer.

Table 1. Demographics of Participants

Note. EIPA = Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment.

Educational Interpreters Invited to Participate in Individualized Educational Plan Meetings and Share Their Perspectives

In the survey, participants were asked to respond to a series of questions that examined their role in regard to the deaf child’s educational placement process and whether they are invited to interpret or to participate as a team member in IEP meetings. A distinction was made between participating in IEP meetings as an invited team member and interpreting these IEP meetings to provide access to deaf and hearing participants, but not as a participating, professional member of the IEP team. Participants reported varying frequency of educational interpreters who are always, sometimes, or never invited to participate in IEP meetings other than interpreting during the meeting (see Table 2). Approximately 33.5% (n = 92) of the educational interpreters responded that they were always invited to IEP meetings; 35.6% (n = 98) responded they were sometimes invited to participate in IEP meetings; and 30.9% (n = 85) responded they were never invited to participate in IEP meetings. This is an interesting finding, reflecting an inconsistent practice among schools in regard to the role of educational interpreters relating to IEP meetings.

Being invited to attend IEP meetings does not necessarily mean that the educational interpreters are asked to share their perspectives about the deaf students’ progress at those meetings. Participants indicated the frequency with which they were asked to share their perspectives about the deaf students’ progress during IEP meetings (see Table 3). Naturally, educational interpreters, being with deaf students for most of the school day, might see more of deaf students’ academic progress than general and special education teachers. Approximately 45.5% (n = 125) of educational interpreters responded that they are asked to share their perspectives of the deaf students’ progress during IEP meetings. However, 49.1% (n = 135) responded that they were sometimes asked to share their perspectives about the deaf students’ progress during IEP meetings. The remaining 5.5% (n = 15) of participants reported they are never asked to share their perspectives, even if they attend IEP meetings.

The educational interpreters who were not invited to IEP meetings but asked to share their perspectives outside of IEP meetings also shared their reports (see Table 4). Approximately 88.4% (n = 243) of the educational interpreters reported that they were asked to share their perspectives of the Deaf students’ progress outside of IEP meetings, whereas 11.3% (n = 31) of educational interpreters reported that they were never asked to share their perspectives of Deaf students outside of IEP meetings.

On the question of whom educational interpreters report to and to whom they share their perspectives on deaf students’ progress outside of IEP meetings, the data revealed a disparity, as may be noted in Table 5.

Table 2. Frequency of Educational Interpreters Invited to Participate in IEP Meetings (As a Percentage of Total Response)

Note. IEP = Individualized Educational Plan.

Table 3. Educational Interpreters Asked to Share Their Perspectives on the Deaf Students’ Progress During IEP Meetings

Note. IEP = Individualized Educational Plan.

Table 4. Educational Interpreters Asked to Share Their Perspectives of the Deaf Students’ Progress Outside of IEP Meetings

Note. IEP = Individualized Educational Plan.

Table 5. Whom Educational Interpreters Directly Report to Versus With Whom Educational Interpreters Share Their Perspectives of Deaf Students’ Progress Outside of IEP Meetings

Note. IEP = Individualized Educational Plan.

A clear disparity can be seen in the table, reflecting a lack of consistency in administrative structure and reporting processes for interpreters in education. This lack of consistency can be seen in all the responses by survey participants and will be addressed in the next section.

Discussion

In this chapter, we have addressed several conflicting realities, including those related to legislation as it pertains to educational placement, the language environments of deaf children, the process of interpretation, and the linguistic competencies it assumes of both the consumer and the provider, and the relevance of incidental learning in an academic context. The juxtaposition of these realities calls into question the efficacy of current practices, in which a high percentage of deaf children experience signed language interpreter-mediated educational placements rather than direct instruction.

According to the literature, 85% of deaf children are fully or partially mainstreamed in public schools. Concurrently, nearly 90% of signed language interpreters who responded to our survey indicate that they interpret in educational settings. Of these, at least 75% have a degree in signed language interpretation, most having worked 5 years or more in the field. Despite these credentials, only a third of respondents hold RID certification, and about half hold no certification but have taken the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA). Of these, less than 1% hold an EIPA 5.0, the level deemed necessary to demonstrate the ability to interpret classroom interactions clearly and accurately. Less than a third of respondents hold an EIPA 4.0 score and, as such, are described as having the ability to convey much of classroom interaction but not necessarily complex topics or rapid turn-taking. Almost half of the respondents hold an EIPA 3.0, a level described as requiring continued supervision and a need for continuing education. This study suggests that more than three-fourths of deaf and hard of hearing signing students work with long-time interpreters who are neither certified nor qualified by EIPA standards to provide access to classroom interaction. According to Schick et al. (2013),

1.85% of deaf and hard of hearing children are mainstreamed in public schools,

2.96% of deaf children are born into hearing families who do not sign ASL, and, subsequently,

3.96% of deaf and hard of hearing children may have difficulty communicating with friends and family.

This reality combined with the lack of interpreter qualifications, as revealed in our survey, suggests that most deaf children (1) do not have preschool immersion in visual language environments, (2) subsequently have an insufficient language base, and (3) are frequently provided with signed language interpreters, who, according to their reported EIPA levels, are not currently qualified to interpret classroom content and interaction.

Furthermore, this study, in keeping with prior research, finds that signed language interpreters in educational settings have no clear administrative structure to support them, no consistent leadership model, and no consistent guidelines or practices with regard to participation in educational placement decisions for students. For example, in this study approximately one-third of respondents were regularly invited to participate in IEPs, approximately one-third were occasionally invited to participate, and approximately one-third were never invited to participate. Further, respondents report sharing their perspectives regarding student placement with a variety of individuals outside of the IEP structured context, including stakeholders ranging from classroom teachers to parents. Research could assist in identifying the implications of interpreters randomly sharing their perspectives about students. Where signed language interpreters work with adult deaf consumers, such a practice would be considered a breach of the confidentiality tenet of the signed language interpretation’s professional code of conduct. In mainstream hearing classrooms, it raises questions of whether teachers or hearing students who conclude that interpreters observe and report on classroom activities in other contexts might, consequently, prefer that interpreters not be present.

Over the past 15 years, a growing body of research has examined signed language interpreting in educational settings. Many of these studies relate to the effectiveness of an interpreter-mediated education. Research has also been conducted on the perspectives of stakeholders, including those of Deaf students (Kurz & Langer, 2004; Napier & Barker, 2004; Stern, 2008), general education teachers, special education teachers, Deaf education teachers, and school administrators, as well as coordinators of interpreting/disability services, both in cities and in rural areas (Fitzmaurice, 2018). In keeping with previous research, this study finds a wide diversity of educational interpreter expectations and behaviors, reflecting a lack of consistency and standards in the expectations about and the role of educational interpreters (Fitzmaurice, 2017, 2018; Stuckless et al., 1989). Clear leadership and supervision could address these issues, especially with evidence-based research findings as a guide.

Limitations and Future Directions

With any research study, limitations must be considered when analyzing data. For example, although this study had a good response rate, the respondents may be less than heterogeneous. The survey audience was made up of interpreters who chose to be members of a national interpreter association. As such, they might be more likely to be long-time practitioners with higher investment in their own education and professionalism. This may explain, in part, why a high percentage of the respondents hold a bachelor’s or master’s degree, mostly in interpretation, and why about three-fourths of the respondents hold an EIPA level or are certified. These demographics may or may not reflect the majority of signed language interpreters working in educational settings. In addition, this survey was self-administered, which leaves the responses subject to the clarity and readability of the survey questionnaire.

The findings of the study support the growing body of evidence that evidence-based standards and guidelines for signed language interpreters in education simply do not exist in practice. Happily, an evidence-based, national, prescriptive guideline for educational signed language interpreters was recently published by the National Association of Interpreters in Education (NAIE; Brown et al., 2019). Consequently, additional research should (1) examine the adoption and implementation of the NAIE guidelines, (2) examine ways in which signed language interpreting practices in education correlate with student outcomes and (3) inform the development of student-centric standards of practice.

Future research directions could address the following questions: Should related service providers such as signed language interpreters be required to serve on IEP teams in the future? What are the language skills of students entering mainstream classrooms? What are best practices? How can interpreter programs ensure that the language skills of interpreters in education are at an EIPA 5.0 level? What types of post-degree education would improve interpreter language skills? How can interpreters best interpret incidental information (what it is, how to include it, and what is its effectiveness and impact on students). What is the most appropriate role of interpreters as a contributing member of the IEP team when making placement decisions? What is the most appropriate role of Deaf advocates when making placement decisions? What skills and credentials are most appropriate for Deaf advocates? What is the impact of experiential criteria and credentials of interpreters and Deaf advocates? And what student characteristics correlate with successful educational placements?

Other research questions related to evidence-based policy and guidelines should center on signed language assessment pre-mainstream education for deaf students; the categorization of educational interpreters under IDEA as related-service providers; and interpreting goals, skills, and knowledge requirements for educational credentials and assessment.

Conclusion

IDEA was written with the intent of providing for the educational needs of children with disabilities in a hearing mainstream school environment. In practice, where deaf and hard of hearing children are concerned, its success is questionable. IDEA presupposes that deaf children come to school with at least one language intact and that the purpose of mainstream education is academic learning. This presumption does not take into account the critical role of incidental learning, a process that occurs automatically for those members of a mainstream environment who, by default, have access to the situational occurrences that create them. Similarly, IDEA presupposes that educational interpreters are conduits providing a simple transfer of uttered messages from one language to another, despite empirical evidence to the contrary. These considerations are complex. Furthermore, their relative significance as it pertains to educational interpreting depends on the individual student, specifically their unique background. Although IDEA aims to provide hearing mainstream education as an option, it does not denote standards against which the efficacy of the option is measured. If linguistic competency is considered fundamental to the efficacy of mainstream education, research consistently provides evidence that the IDEA option of placing deaf and hard of hearing children in hearing educational settings is not appropriate. As such, individuals competent at assessing ASL competency in deaf and hard of hearing children should be required members of an IEP team. For this reason, Wolfe’s (2002) suggestion that “Congress should intervene and clearly establish guidelines … [to] better balance the countervailing interests in a way that would best serve disabled students …” (p. 1655) is especially pertinent with regard to signed language interpreters in education and the deaf students they serve.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge and thank the following groups and individuals for their support and assistance with this study: the participants in our study, the National Association of Educational Interpreters, Susan Brown, Sean Viring, and Kevin Williams.

Note

1.This is true regardless of whether the child is not yet linguistically fluent or the interpreter is not sufficiently fluent to interpret effectively. The latter speaks to interpreter education, assessment, and credentialing for working in education, which is beyond the scope of this chapter.

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