As Jennine Capó Crucet (2019) describes in My Time Among the Whites: Notes From an Unfinished Education, navigating U.S. higher education as a first-generation Cuban American and the first in her family to attend college was a challenge. She recounts her experience at the opening session of her first-year orientation, when a university dean thanked everyone for their attendance and then, using a tongue-in-cheek joke, invited parents to leave so that the newly admitted students could transition into their lives on campus. Whereas most of those in attendance laughed, Crucet and her family did not, specifically her grandmother, who was most concerned because Jennine’s sister had stopped interpreting the remarks into Spanish. Even if her sister continued interpreting, Jennine’s parents and grandmother would have remained confused, given the significant lacunae in their understanding of the college experience in the United States. Now a tenured faculty member at a large institution, Crucet (2019) can describe these interactions from the perspective of someone who understands and is part of the educational system. However, as she depicts in the volume, the intersections of race, power, identity—and, by extension, language—shape and define her American experience, with systemic challenges that continue to face the Latinx community.

While Crucet’s memoir is a recounting of a unique confluence of personal experiences within a specific context, it is not wholly uncommon. Similar situations play out on a regular basis in classrooms and educational contexts across the country as a result of linguistic and cultural barriers forming roadblocks for those who do not speak English or who have limited proficiency in the language. These students and their families have diverse backgrounds, with some being first-generation immigrants and others being U.S.-born children of non-English-speaking parents. Others may be refugees or come from families who speak languages other than English as a home language. Despite the diversity found among linguistic communities throughout the United States, immigrant students are often grouped together in school systems as English language learners (ELLs), based on testing that aims to determine English language proficiency (Baran, 2017, pp. 228ff). In 2016, nearly five million students enrolled in elementary or secondary schools in the United States were classified as ELLs, with more than 10% of public school students classified as ELLs in nine states (NCES, 2019).¹

Of the students classified as ELL, not all of them encounter difficulties in their coursework, nor do they require language services to access their education. The ways in which these language challenges are met vary considerably nationwide, particularly at the local school district level. The adopted approaches are a result of a matrix of variables framed by language and educational policies at the national or state level, school districts, and the specific school in which students are enrolled. Although not always explicitly stated, translation and interpreting services regularly figure into how students and their families are able to gain language access to participate fully in their education.

The scale at which translation and interpreting are provided to students and their families is difficult to determine, in part because of the people who render these services. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that as of May 2019, 9,130 translators and interpreters are employed nationwide in elementary and secondary schools, whereas 2,100 work in colleges, universities, and professional schools. These figures represent both translators and interpreters of signed and spoken languages, so it is not possible to determine whether these figures serve the previously mentioned ELL population or deaf and hard of hearing people. Nevertheless, these professionals are only one group that provides translation and interpreting services; bilingual staff, friends, family members, and enrolled students provide these services on an ad hoc basis as well. Determining the scope of this work is even more difficult than that of the professional interpreters, given the hidden nature of this type of work (Orellana, 2009). Research on child language brokering has been conducted in educational settings and has documented this linguistic activity occurring in a variety of ways, but the scope of activity has not yet been explored in detail.²

Therefore, this chapter addresses the ways in which spoken language interpreting manifests in U.S. K–12 educational contexts, and argues for the critical role that professional spoken language interpreters can and should play in facilitating language access to non-English-speaking or limited English proficient (LEP) individuals in these settings.³ To do so, the chapter opens with a brief overview of the types of communication that often occur in educational settings as well as the legal and regulatory framework within which language access and services are provided in the United States in educational contexts with respect to spoken languages. This discussion draws primarily on the legal mandates and educational policy established in relation to ELL students, which ultimately shape the way these students are viewed within school systems. Then, several points of contact at which students and their families regularly interact with the school system are reviewed, with an eye toward the role that interpreters can and should play when providing these critical language services. The discussions of each of these points of contact—i.e., individualized education program (IEP) hearings, parent–teacher conferences, and the classroom—synthesize current scholarship drawn from bilingual education, child language brokering, and interpreting studies to illustrate the scope and type of interpreting provided in these contexts. To conclude, spoken language interpreters are positioned as a necessary element that ought to be systematically provided for ELL, LEP, and non-English-speaking students and families to allow them more equitable access to the U.S. education system.

Situating Spoken Language Interpreting in Educational Contexts

Spoken language interpreting in U.S. educational contexts goes largely unrecognized given the relatively limited presence of professional interpreters in school districts, coupled with an overreliance on untrained bilingual staff, students, or family members to perform these tasks. This situation is further compounded by the range of settings in which this type of language mediation occurs. Unlike other types of interpreting, such as court or medical interpreting, in which professional organizations often delineate the settings or spaces in which professional interpreters work and circumscribe its scope and nature, educational interpreting for spoken languages in the United States is a relatively amorphous concept. Whereas signed language interpreters could seek accreditation by the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf to work in educational contexts with the Educational Certificate: K–12 until 2016,⁴ spoken language interpreters have not had a national organization or credential available. In September 2019, efforts were initiated to redress this issue, and a working group, Interpreting and Translation in Education, was formed to develop standards and ethics for those working in educational settings.

The plurality of settings and participants, however, poses a significant challenge to outlining the tasks of the educational interpreter. As an initial step toward highlighting the ways in which spoken language interpreting is performed in U.S. educational contexts, this chapter conceives three broad categories of interactions among various stakeholders: (1) general school system or administration communications with the general LEP community; (2) specific communications between the school district and an LEP family or student; and (3) within the classroom or learning environment. This categorization is somewhat arbitrary, insofar as the types of communication that occur have not been empirically determined as being distinct. Nevertheless, these broad categories defined by their participants provide an overview of how LEP families or students interact with the U.S. educational system.

The first category, namely, general communication between the school system and the larger LEP community, encompasses any type of communication in which schools or districts aim to reach a broad audience. For instance, school board meetings, general notices to newly arrived or relocating students, parent–teacher association meetings or events, college or job fairs, or press releases or communiques typically address the entire community regardless of home language or demographics. In some of these contexts, the communicative goal is to disseminate information and does not require participation on the part of recipients. For instance, information regarding school closings or delays as a result of weather or changes to specific policies might be sent to all enrolled students. This type of communication does not necessarily require a response on the part of the family or student but, rather, is provided as a unified message to the entire school community. Some of these settings, however, do allow the community to interact with the school district as active participants. This interaction is not obligatory on the part of LEPs—for example, attendance is not mandatory at school board meetings, nor does attendance require participation. Instead, these contexts provide an avenue by which the community can interact, should families or students choose to do so.

The second category is a more specific type of communication in which LEP students and their families are required to be active participants in the communication as a result of the very nature of the settings themselves. For example, parent–teacher conferences, IEP or 504 plan meetings, disciplinary hearings, and disability evaluations require explicit involvement and intervention of multiple parties, including the LEP individual. These types of meetings have a direct, and often immediate, impact on students, and their active participation during these discussions is of considerable importance. This category might also address outward-facing mechanisms of the school district or specific schools to communicate with parents or guardians so that they can speak with school officials. For instance, parents may need to call the main office to excuse a student from an absence due to illness or travel, or they might have general inquiries about school events or policies. Similarly, parents and teachers may communicate about student progress or behavior outside of formal parent–teacher conferences. In this second type of category of interaction, the focus is on immediate, real-time communication between LEP families and the school system.

The third category of communication describes communication within the classroom itself. Whereas the first two categories are focused on interactions between a range of external parties and the LEP family or student, this type of interaction considers how language is used by individuals who interact with students on a regular basis. This type of communication occurs largely among teachers, support personnel, and students during classes or during the school day within the schools. These interactions are perhaps more intensive and ongoing than those in the first two categories, given the frequency with which they occur and the rapport that is ultimately established among the different parties. In addition, the third category encompasses communication among students in the classroom, wherein LEP students are learning alongside their classmates. Informal communication among students differs considerably from many of the previously described interactions, yet classroom dynamics are shaped by student-to-student communication and ought to be considered as part of this third category.

This categorization provides a rough framework to examine how spoken language interpreting occurs in educational settings. This chapter addresses several of these settings in detail, focusing on interpreting activity occurring in these contexts, but the veritable range of interactions highlights the importance of a multifaceted, pluralistic approach to examining the role of spoken language interpreting. Moreover, educational interpreting can and should be conceptualized beyond the classroom to account for the heterogeneous nature of the work. While Orellana’s (2009) conception of hidden work focuses primarily on language brokering performed by bilingual children in a range of settings, the sentiment holds in a broader sense; language mediation in U.S. educational contexts, be it by professional or nonprofessional interpreters or by language brokers, occurs in many settings and ought to recognized outright for its role in the education of ELL and its impact on their families.

Legal and Regulatory Frameworks

Discussions surrounding language access and language use in educational contexts are often concomitant with reflections on bilingual education and English language learning in the United States. Although not explicitly related to educational interpreting, this discourse has an immediate impact on spoken language interpreting in these settings because bilingual education programs in their various forms often require language services such as translation or interpreting to meet the needs of students and their families. However, the sociopolitical context must be considered as a macrolevel frame within which this discourse is embedded, because the at-times competing influences have a direct bearing on how language and educational policy are written and implemented (Ijalba & Velasco, 2019).

As Del Valle (2003, p. 6) notes, “[T]he legislative, judicial, and public response to bilingual education is a weathervane by which the national sentiment toward language minorities and new immigrants can be gauged.” The express link between these language policies in school districts and prevailing political views of immigration and linguistic rights cannot be understated; the legal and regulatory frameworks that have been established with regard to bilingual education and language use in the school systems have considerable effects, ranging from the promotion of multilingual communities to the imposition of assimilationist approaches to English-only education. To put a finer point on this influence, Kibbee (2016, p. 85) argues:

[A]ccording to the way the political winds were blowing, federal and state funding, accreditation and assessment through testing has sometimes promoted a uniform curriculum and a uniform language, using a principle of equality to limit educational options, or it sometimes has promoted dual-language programs and language maintenance efforts.

Here, Kibbee clarifies how policy implemented under the guise of equality can hamper efforts to support academic opportunities for ELL or it can openly embrace plurilingual approaches to education to support a wider range of learners. Proponents of bilingual education have also argued, basing their argument on Title VI, that access to bilingual education is a civil right and that funding decisions should be rethought to better support students learning in their home language in addition to English as a medium of instruction (see Ijalba & Velasco, 2019). Although a full history of these policies lies outside the scope of this chapter, several extensive reviews of these policies are available in the literature (e.g., Baran, 2017; Del Valle, 2003; Kibbee, 2016). The focus here will instead be on several salient points in that history that have a direct bearing on the provision of spoken language interpreting services in the United States.

A notable feature of U.S. educational policy is the considerable leeway that local school districts and individual schools have to implement state- and national-level educational policies and guidelines. Whereas these overarching guidelines are issued by departments of education at the state and federal levels, schools and their districts have, in many cases, been tasked with finding ways to implement these directives in their local contexts. This multitiered approach to educational policy creates potential tension between the ability of the state and federal government to hold local districts accountable for student success and the ability of local districts to determine the best means by which to comply with these mandates. Supporters of local control ultimately argue that school districts can consider their specific communities and tailor responses and implementation to their unique needs, while prescribed implementation strategies may not be as readily applicable in their specific context.⁵ When guidelines are drafted by multiple administrations—as in the case of an election middevelopment, for example—this task becomes even more challenging should policy guidance become incoherent or conflict with prevailing guidelines (Chrispeels, 1997). Ultimately, these policies can metaphorically translate into disjointed or equally incoherent implementation strategies at the local level. More recent critical analyses of education policies recognize how the development process, along with the power dynamics that drive and shape these decisions, can impact minority and nondominant groups in the community (e.g., Young & Diem, 2017). Therefore, recognition that policy-level guidance may not reflect local level implementations is particularly germane to the discussion in the present chapter pertaining to language access.

As a result of this localized approach to policy implementation, school districts vary greatly in how they address bilingual education, English language learning, and the provision of language services. This variability can be seen both nationwide as well as within the same state. Bilingual models of education are varied and can be broadly classified as being additive or subtractive (Ijalba & Velasco, 2019). Additive approaches to bilingual education seek to maintain or support a student’s home language in addition to learning English and can take the form of dual immersion language programs (Ijalba & Velasco, 2019). In contrast, subtractive models of bilingual education seek to transition students from using the home language to largely using English in academic contexts.

In the United States, several key legal decisions have had a major impact on ELL and bilingual education. Most notable is a 1974 legal case brought against the San Francisco school district, Lau v. Nichols, in which a group of Chinese students argued that their constitutional rights had been violated because the school district had not provided any aid in learning English.⁶ The basis of their claim was that the school district’s failure to provide support for learning English ultimately led the students to be treated unfairly and unduly discriminated against, in contravention of the U.S. Constitution and Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case was ultimately heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the ELL plaintiffs. In its decision, the court stipulated that the school had an obligation to redress the “language deficiency” of the students, but the specific means by which this was to be accomplished was left to the school district. Scholars have illustrated that the ruling does not afford bilingual education for all (Rodriguez, 2006), and the matter is far from settled. For instance, Kleven (2007) reviews legal precedent to argue in favor of bilingual education as a fundamental right. In a similar vein, Humphries et al. (2013) makes the case for children to have the right to language, particularly in the case of deaf children, on the basis of a review of international legal requirements and U.S. legislation. This last study is particularly noteworthy in that the case is made in large part for deaf children, yet they recognize its applicability to hearing children who are non-English speakers as well, and draw on the literature on both deaf and hearing communities to support their claims.

These arguments are also instantiated in recent policies that have wended their way through the court systems. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, several bans on bilingual education in California, Massachusetts, and Arizona reinvigorated arguments both in favor of and against the use of languages other than English in U.S. classrooms. These bans were implemented largely as part of an English-only movement to eliminate other languages in educational settings (García, 2009a). Ijalba and Velasco (2019) detail their trajectories as well as the repercussions that these bans have had on the educational systems in those states. Two of the three states (California and Massachusetts) have since overturned these language bans; however, the ban in Arizona remains in effect. Nevertheless, the recency of these bans speaks to the timeliness of discussions surrounding language policy and education, whereas the measurable impacts of these state-level policies on individual students in the classroom demonstrate that local control on implementation strategies are somewhat limited.

Although by no means exhaustive, the state and federal case laws presented here demonstrate the constant flux within which school districts operate. In addition, the variable nature of how bilingual education and English language learning are incorporated into school districts necessitates the context-specific nature of scholarship on language policy and its implementation throughout the United States. The focus of this chapter, namely, where and how spoken language interpreting fits into this highly mutable landscape, requires explicit recognition of this heterogeneous legal, political, and educational situation. This challenge is further exacerbated by the lack of legal precedent to require the provision of language services in some educational contexts, although this situation differs for speakers of signed and spoken languages. These policies surrounding bilingual education and language use rarely address the provision of language services in these educational settings, and, consequently, they remain widely open to interpretation. As such, local responses to the need for language services run the gamut from little to no provision to fully developed language plans. At the macrolevel, Tipton and Furmanek (2017) report on best practices reported in Colorado, New York, and California to provide interpreting services in educational contexts. At a more granular, local level, the Orange County Department of Education Multilingual Consortium in California as well as the Minneapolis public school system and St. Paul public schools in Minnesota explicitly address the need for translation and interpreting while providing information about these services on their respective websites. Nevertheless, these implementation strategies are unique to the local school setting and vary across districts.

Bilingual Education, Language Brokering, and Interpreting Studies

Before addressing the specific points of contact at which spoken language interpreting has been documented to occur in educational settings, it is important to recognize the different scholarly traditions represented in the cited literature. To date, research that explicitly addresses spoken language interpreting in U.S. educational contexts has been relatively scarce. Scholarship on language brokering, language policy, and bilingual education at times addresses spoken language interpreting indirectly and is more readily available; however, the limited presence of professional interpreters in many school systems or classrooms, coupled with the invisible work performed by many bilingual staff, students, and family members, is reflected in the extant literature.

The ways in which spoken language interpreting in educational contexts can be investigated are numerous, and the area is primed for additional inquiry. For instance, language and educational policy scholars may approach language mediation in the classroom from the perspective of the provision of specific language services or programs within a school system and the ways by which these policies are implemented. In contrast, scholars who examine legal and regulatory mandates may focus on requirements that stipulate what types of services can or must be offered and to whom, based on a range of variables, including immigration and citizenship status or recognized disabilities, without taking into account questions surrounding academic achievement or learning. Still other perspectives might question how language services can be provided using newer technologies with an eye toward how these alter the work of interpreters. Additionally, questions of justice and ethics exist in all of these research lines.

In this chapter, scholarship on bilingual education, language brokering, and interpreting studies will be used to discuss interlingual spoken communication between English and another language. The rationale of drawing on multiple areas of scholarship lies in the ill-defined nature of what constitutes interpreting services in these contexts. By tracing the provenance of the terms language brokering, nonprofessional interpreting, and ad hoc interpreting, Antonini et al. (2017) describe how the people performing these tasks differ from their professional counterparts. In some ways, this difference can be based on the intentional recruitment of a person who is bound by a code of ethics or standard of practice in performing their assigned task. However, another differentiation is one of remuneration for the work being performed. Antonini et al. (2017) distinguish many of these terms, with language brokering referring to what might be described as naturally occurring interpreting performed by children that emphasizes the sociological dimension of this communication, whereas ad hoc interpreting addresses the spontaneous nature of interpreting that occurs in response to an immediate need. Because the people performing these tasks in U.S. educational contexts can be found working within the many permutations of these definitions, it is appropriate to look at research from all of these fields.

Borrero (2011, 2015) provides an example of why it is important to draw on scholarship from both language brokering and interpreting studies. Borrero (2015) reports on an ethnographic study that examines the role that language brokering played in the lives of bilingual Latino/a students and its impact on their self-confidence and academic success. The students described in this study could, in some respects, be defined as language brokers given their unremunerated work in the community to mediate between English-speaking school officials and non-English-speaking friends and family. Nevertheless, their participation in a Young Interpreters Program during their middle school years (Borrero, 2011) suggests more explicit training that might qualify these students as neither language brokers nor professional interpreters. The narratives these students provide to the conversation around educational interpreting provide insights into the hidden work of educational interpreting, and, therefore, bringing together multiple strands of scholarship to discuss this work is paramount. For instance, Borrero’s (2015) study reports that students see the value of their interpreting on their academic performance, inspiring their interest in using their language abilities to write and speak in a variety of genres. Moreover, Borrero’s (2015) informants speak about how their language brokering experiences help to preserve their language skills, to develop pride in their bilingualism and cultural heritage, and to give back to their local communities. These types of ethnographic studies of language brokering and interpreting in secondary education settings construct a more contiguous history of heritage language learners and their experiences with interpreting, connecting early and middle school education (e.g., Angelelli, 2010, 2016; Valdés, 2003) with university-level studies (e.g., Mellinger & Gasca Jiménez, 2019).

This pluralistic approach to scholarship has been useful in the context of bilingual education, namely, in bringing together research on language difference and language disorder (e.g., Ijalba et al., 2019). As Ofelia García (2019) in her foreword to Language, Culture, and Education: Challenges of Diversity in the United States attests, language difference is not akin to language disorder, and their regular treatment in isolation ultimately leads to scholarly conversations that fail to acknowledge the mutual impact of these two areas. Yet despite their distinctions, these concepts have been conflated in practice in many contexts, leading to the unfortunate reality that a disproportionate number of ELL are misclassified as having learning or language disorders (Crowley & Baigorri, 2019a). The relationship that this work has on bilingual education will be taken up in greater detail in the discussion on IEPs as a point of contact that non-English speakers have with the school systems; however, the case to be made here is for a more holistic approach to scholarship in these areas. García (2019, p. xvi) concludes that bridging the divide between language difference and language disorder allows for the development of “holistic and appropriate services that leverage the language and cultural practices of the families.” The same argument can be made in relation to language services; a more nuanced understanding of educational interpreting can be had by dint of recognition of the varied nature of language brokering and spoken language interpreting in these settings.

Points of Contact

Scholarship on spoken language educational interpreting has been conducted in many countries, including South Africa and the United Kingdom. This study mirrors the macrolevel framework presented in this chapter, because the educational systems are embedded within each country’s unique sociopolitical and linguistic landscape. South Africa, in particular, exemplifies the country-specific nature of language policy and implications with a language policy designed to afford multilingual linguistic rights to its citizens after the end of the apartheid. Du Plessis (2017) describes the linguistic realities of interpreting services being provided at the University of the Free State, which was the first to include translation and interpreting services in line with a national language framework to provide access to education in multiple languages. In the review of the current situation, Du Plessis notes that a fully formed translation and interpreting service is not explicitly outlined in the university’s language policy, thereby leading to inconsistency among the institutional aims and language practices and raising questions regarding the sustainability of these services. Du Plessis (2017) argues that this service is indeed sustainable if institutional aims and policies are in alignment and that, although an implicit language policy does not explicitly call for these services to be rendered, its implementation can account for the multilingual realities of its student body and staff.

How interpreting services are rendered in a context such as South Africa is perhaps another matter. As seen previously, policy and implementation are not always the same. Van Rooy (2005) provides insight into some of the specifics of integrating spoken language interpreting between Afrikaans and English in university settings. More specifically, van Rooy examines the potential to integrate simultaneous interpreting of lectures into classrooms in which Afrikaans is the medium of instruction while English-dominant students require the support of interpreters. The findings suggest that the provision of simultaneous interpreting helps to mitigate the differences in student performance when only monolingual instruction is provided. By identifying the impact that interpreting services can have, the author also provides evidence against immersion or submersion programs for learning English and instead favors a plurilingual or translingual approach to education that leverages existing student skill sets.

By contrast, schools in the United Kingdom operate in a very different sociopolitical and legal framework, insofar as Crafter et al. (2017) report a lack of policy guidelines for language mediation by students at the school, district, or national level. Consequently, these researchers investigated the perspectives of both teachers and the language brokers themselves to better understand the situation in which these child language brokers functioned as a liaison between speakers of multiple languages. Some of the language brokers indicated that this work ultimately led to a development in their language skills, which was a perspective also echoed by the teachers in the schools. However, the child language brokers also indicate several drawbacks to relying on nonprofessional interpreters to function as linguistic intermediaries. For example, Crafter et al. (2017) document a change in social dynamics between students, with some language brokers reporting that they lose/lost friends as a result of their interpreting, because they had to render everything that was said by teachers or parents. In addition, whereas some teachers report that students appear to have greater self-confidence, others were concerned that students felt exposed or embarrassed as a result of being the center of attention during these encounters. The lack of any explicit policy encouraging or forbidding the use of student language brokers in the United Kingdom creates a dynamic in which the local schools are ultimately faced with the challenge of negotiating these situations on a case-by-case basis.

These two international cases illustrate how the educational system is embedded in the history, culture, and politics of a country so that scholarship on language brokering or interpreting must understand the broader context of these multiple influences. The points of contact discussed in the following sections will focus on the United States to document how interpreting services have been rendered at specific points of contact encountered by non-English speakers or those with limited proficiency in English. The chosen interactions—namely parent–teacher conferences, IEP hearings, and communication within the classroom—are drawn from the multiple interactions described at the outset of the chapter. The studies cited in each subsection provide insights on current practices in schools and the impacts that they have on students. Furthermore, these descriptions serve as a point of departure for reflection on how professional language services, and, in particular, interpreting services, might be integrated into these settings. Although not an exhaustive review of every potential point of contact, the diverse range of interpreted or mediated interactions provides a window into the crucial role that professional interpreters could play in providing language access and meeting the linguistic rights and needs of a diverse student body.

Parent–Teacher Conferences

In elementary and secondary school, a common form of interaction between teachers and families is the parent–teacher conference. The goal of these conferences is largely to encourage “parental involvement in children’s education” and to develop “home–school connections” (Minke & Anderson, 2003, p. 49). In these interactions, parents and teachers can discuss the progress of a student as well as any concerns related to a student’s performance. These meetings are quite common in U.S. schools, yet research has shown that these interactions are often performative, with parents striving to play a socially expected or desirable role when reacting to the information provided by the teacher (Pillet-Shore, 2015). Moreover, the type of engagement that teachers seek from parents may differ on the basis of whether the student comes from a majority or minority demographic (Trumbull et al., 2001). However, the ways teachers perceive parental engagement may not be indicative of reality; students of parents who might be considered less engaged find their parents to be highly engaged in their education at home, particularly because they have inculcated the value of education in these students (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). To borrow García-Carmona et al.’s (2019) term, these “hard-to-reach” families may, nevertheless, not have the same cultural understanding of the function of a parent–teacher conference but instead may view their role as being to provide a more holistic education at home rather than the focus being solely on the school (García, 2019).

The ways in which language services are provided for these types of bilingual interactions are likely to be most closely related to district-level policies related to language access and inclusion, given the frequency with which these interactions occur and the prerogative to meet with families of all enrolled students. In the case of non-English-speaking families, there are a number of documented cases in which bilingual students have functioned as language brokers (Borrero, 2015; Orellana, 2009) or paraphrasers (Orellana et al., 2003) during parent–teacher conferences. In some instances, the children about whom the meeting is being held function as an interpreter, whereas in others, fellow bilingual students have filled this role. There are also documented cases in which students translate notes or letters from school, presumably orally, for their family (Weisskirch, 2005).

When child language brokers or other school officials are involved in providing language brokering or interpreting services, the interpreter ultimately plays several roles simultaneously (Orellana, 2009). For instance, children who interpret for their teachers and parents are both the subject of the evaluation and the mediator of the encounter. As a result, side conversations not strictly related to the goal of the meeting may not be rendered in one of the languages to the detriment of the person not privy to that interaction. In addition, children often exhibit self-effacing or diminishing behaviors in these parent–teacher conferences. As Orellana (2009) asserts, these linguistic moves are likely the result of intergenerational discourse and interaction strategies, wherein children may downplay praise provided by a teacher to avoid sounding overly confident to parents.⁷ In addition, students may enhance any criticism to align with what parents might expect their children to say. In one example, Orellana (2009) describes how considerable praise of a student gets downgraded and how a minor critique of what a student might be able to continue working on is enhanced to needing to “study more.” Although the teacher was aware of the shift in linguistic tone that was occurring and often functioned to coconstruct meaning with the student during the parent–teacher conference, the student’s ultimate rendition was one that was significantly more muted in its praise than originally provided by the teacher. The same holds true in their renditions between students and their parents because parents could also function as coconstructors of meaning on the basis of their understanding of what might have been said by the teacher.

Bilingual staff at times also serve as interpreters in parent–teacher conferences. Colomer (2010), for instance, describes the dual role that Spanish teachers often have when working in Latino communities. These teachers are often thrust into the role of the interpreter to provide linguistic support for both parents and teachers without any formal training or background in interpreting. Although their training regularly covers content specific to teaching Spanish language or literature, this background does not necessarily encompass how to discuss educational concepts or terminology in Spanish. As a result, these teachers report not having the necessary domain-specific terminology for academic discussions pertaining to student performance, assessment, and development, thereby undermining their ability to effectively render information from the school system or teachers to parents (Colomer, 2010). Moreover, the diverse backgrounds and language varieties of the students complicate their ability to understand the language being used by Spanish-speaking parents. These challenges are exacerbated when having to render these services in mediated contexts, such as over the phone because they rely on visual cues or body language for understanding these speakers. In Colomer’s study, dual role teachers encountered these challenges regardless of whether their L1 was Spanish or English.

As a result of these experiences, teachers regularly found themselves questioning their abilities to function in Spanish and to provide interpreting services. This self-recognition of their limitations is admirable and illustrates the complexity of interpreting in educational settings. Nevertheless, some of these teachers also indicate that potential mistakes or difficulties were not always revealed when they interpreted these meetings in an effort to save face. Moreover, as one teacher commented, they found it possible to deviate from the task of interpreting to explain a situation on the basis of their knowledge of the subject matter rather than rendering the original source language utterance, when it “doesn’t seem to be a legally binding situation” (Colomer, 2010, p. 496). The same holds true in the case of Orellana’s (2009) study, in which a Spanish-speaking administrator took over the role of the interpreter from the student about whom the parent and teacher were meeting. In this case, the administrator added his own evaluation that the student needed to “do their homework” at the end of the encounter without being prompted to interject by the teacher. Although the comment may seem innocuous to the casual listener, the administrator was unaware of the after-school arrangements that the teacher and parent had already agreed on in relation to completing homework assignments. In doing so, the administrator in a single line may have undermined the teacher’s authority and the collaborative relationship already established between parent and teacher. In the situations described by both Colomer and Orellana, the potential exists for students or parents to have been negatively impacted by the ineffective, albeit well-intentioned, renditions provided by these teachers or administrators.

Parent–teacher conferences are a prime example of how professional interpreters could have a meaningful impact on language access. Although many of the strategies employed in the previously mentioned studies are well intentioned, they do not represent equitable access to the same educational experience for ELL and their parents. Indeed, Colomer (2010) concludes with the argument that the strategy of employing bilingual staff who are not trained interpreters ultimately fails to satisfy Title VI requirements for language access. Instead, professional language services allow teachers, parents, and students to occupy a singular role during these encounters rather than having to navigate competing relationships. García-Carmona et al. (2019) describe the value that professional interpreters add to parent–teacher conferences, and Ohtake et al. (2000) advocate for interpreters to be perceived as part of the educational team.

Individualized Education Program Hearings

A second point of contact for some LEP individuals with the school system is an IEP meeting. As the name suggests, IEPs refer to a plan or program in which children with identified disabilities receive legally mandated specialized instruction and support services. These plans are specific to students enrolled in elementary or secondary education and are customized to each student to support academic success. Part of the IEP development process is an evaluation to determine whether students qualify for special education services. If a student is considered eligible, the school system schedules an IEP meeting in which the parents and school system representatives meet to write the IEP and determine what services can and should be provided. These plans can be contested by the parents or the IEP team, and they are reviewed on an annual basis. Students with IEPs are reevaluated every 3 years to determine ongoing eligibility. This process is legally mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides the procedural guidelines for developing IEPs.

LEP students and their families have the added challenge of navigating this complex system in a language that is not their own. To mitigate this challenge, the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed at the end of 2015, makes provisions for ELL and LEP students to support their participation in educational programs and communicate information to their families in a language that they understand. Moreover, laws enforced by the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights, including Title VI and other federal mandates, indicate that ELL students “must be provided both the language assistance and disability-related services to which they are entitled under federal law.”⁸ Moreover, IDEA stipulates that school districts “take whatever action is necessary to ensure that the parent understands the proceedings of the IEP team meeting, including arranging for an interpreter for parents with deafness or whose native language is other than English.”⁹

Coupled with these guidelines related to the provision of language services is the requirement that ELL students be evaluated in their home or primary language to determine whether they qualify for special education services and an IEP. This requirement addresses concerns related to measurement; that is to say, evaluation tools that are developed in one language might not be effective in determining whether special needs support is necessary if the student is not proficient in that language (Crowley & Baigorri, 2019a; see also García & Kleifgen, 2018). The means by which LEP students are evaluated fall outside the scope of the present chapter; however, explicit mention of the language of testing in policy documents and measurement concerns raised in the research literature illustrate the importance that language plays in the evaluation stages.

These various national-level policies and legal requirements are designed to provide language access to LEP students and their families, yet the implementation of these policies varies from district to district. Research indicates that LEP students are disproportionately classified as requiring special education and IEPs (Crowley & Baigorri, 2019a; García, 2019). Moreover, scholars have questioned whether financial resources would be better allocated to providing bilingual education to allow students to learn in both their home language and English rather than continuing to misclassify LEP students as special education students (Ijalba, 2019). Although bilingual education may provide a more holistic education for LEP students, previous studies have indicated that schools with established programs are still unable to serve all of the LEP students enrolled in the school (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). Moreover, policy considerations ought to account for who can access these bilingual programs (Wall et al., 2019) and how these programs can be assessed to ensure equitable opportunities for students (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017).

Recent policy guidelines recognize the misalignment of policy and implementation, stating that noncompliance has taken many forms, including testing LEP students in the wrong language, not providing interpreting services for LEP parents to fully participate in IEP meetings, or delaying assessment with a resulting denial of language assistance services (Lhamon & Gupta, 2015). These policies, however, have been clarified so that they cannot be considered carte blanche to demand written translation or oral interpreting of all documents or hearings, and summary translation or oral interpreting in lieu of a full translation may be deemed sufficient (Ryder, 2016).

Nevertheless, the legal mandate to require an interpreter during IEP meetings has led to investigations of how these services are provided and whether they are effective in overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers. Lo (2008), for instance, researches the level of satisfaction that several Chinese-speaking families have with the IEP process. In her study, she notes these meetings can include relatively minimal parental involvement, which she attributes to poor interpreting services that only provided summaries or minimal information about what was being discussed. The same issue is documented in another study, by Wolfe and Durán (2013), that reviews nine studies in which culturally and linguistically diverse parents were involved in the IEP process. Wolfe and Durán attribute some of the cultural and linguistic barriers to the lack of interpreters who are qualified and trained specifically for working in these contexts. Colomer (2010) also indicates that bilingual teachers struggled to interpret during IEP hearings because of the technical jargon used during these hearings.

The challenge, however, exceeds the common trope of blaming the interpreter for problems in cross-language communication. For instance, Larios and Zetlin (2013, 2018) examine the IEP process and provide a counternarrative to the many negative experiences reported in the literature by culturally and linguistically diverse populations. In particular, the study illustrates how school personnel can improve their communication with Latinx families. The authors identify several situations in which the interpreting services are less than ideal, particularly when interpreters changed over the course of the IEP process and when they provided only summary renditions of what was going on during the meetings. Indeed, these communication challenges point to deficits in the provision of adequate interpreting services. However, as part of the identified “problems with the interpreter” (Larios & Zetlin, 2018, p. 17), they include the simultaneous interpreting provided by the school district’s interpreter, who was described as speaking too fast and using technical jargon. This characterization of the rendition could be problematic, because the authors do not describe whether the rendition was complete, accurate, and impartial; indeed, no determination of any possible errors by the interpreter can be made because no transcripts are available for review. Nevertheless, the use of technical jargon in these hearings is likely consistent with the experience of English language speakers during IEP meetings. Therefore, the challenge of complete understanding cannot be considered to lie solely with the interpreter in what is a complicated series of meetings with legal and educational ramifications. Larios and Zetlin (2013) describe this possibility in an earlier case study with different LEP families being versed in the IEP process to varying degrees.

The availability of qualified and trained interpreters is one potential solution for communication barriers encountered during IEP meetings (Wolfe & Durán, 2013). In addition, Lo (2012) and Larios and Zetlin (2013) suggest that the same interpreter be present, when possible, to assist with specific LEP families. This recommendation would likely help families become more comfortable with the various parties involved and the specifics of each IEP, thereby facilitating their work and potentially improving the comprehension of the LEP families. Ohtake et al. (2000) suggest that the interpreter be considered part of the IEP team to overcome any potential hostility or resentment from being harbored. They also suggest, however, that the provision of interpreters is not necessarily a permanent solution; instead, bilingual staff who can directly interact with students or family members in their home language in settings outside of IEP meetings may demonstrate the school district’s commitment to supporting the student in their academic success. In doing so, interpreters are also able to participate in newer models of assessment that take into account cultural and linguistic variables that have, to date, not been comprehensively incorporated into these evaluations (Crowley & Baigorri, 2019b).

The Classroom

The previous two points of contact focus primarily on interactions that LEP families have with school districts or administrators; however, the greatest contact that LEP students have with schools is in their classrooms. Language brokering, translation, and interpreting occur in many of these learning settings, and these tasks can be examined from at least two perspectives. In the first, translation, interpreting, and language brokering can be viewed as a pedagogical tool or approach to facilitate or enhance language learning. A second approach would be the ways in which these tasks can facilitate the involvement of LEP students in classrooms, regardless of the content area.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the research and pedagogy communities on how translation and interpreting can be used as an aid to language learning.¹⁰ Although translation had previously been shunned in language learning classrooms in favor of more communicative approaches to language teaching (Mellinger, 2017), more recent thinking suggests that translation and interpreting can complement a variety of approaches to language teaching. A number of scholars have reviewed this shift toward the inclusion of translation and interpreting in the language learning curriculum (e.g., Cook, 2010; Laviosa, 2014; Pym, 2018), and some have even advocated for translation to be incorporated as a fifth skill that language students ought to be learning from the outset of their language education (Colina & Lafford, 2017). This approach is sometimes termed pedagogical translation, and researchers have begun to explore how to integrate these skills into their classrooms, from a focus on text genres and writing (e.g., Baer & Mellinger, 2020) to more targeted writing tasks in support of L2 or heritage language learners (e.g., Gasca Jiménez, 2017, 2019). This type of work is being done not only at the university level, but also in elementary and secondary education (for a review, see Ardizzone & Holmes, 2020).

This strand of thinking addresses translation and interpreting in a more formal way, with its explicit inclusion in the pedagogical approach of teachers. This approach is useful to examine how translation and interpreting in learning environments can enhance or complement existing language pedagogies, while allowing translation and interpreting to be the focus of specific learning activities or outcomes. Moreover, the inclusion of translation or interpreting in the language learning classroom recognizes that students will ultimately be faced with these tasks at some point in their lives, and LEP students may already be brokering across languages in a number of settings.

Nevertheless, this conceptualization of translation and interpreting does not account for some of the other translation, interpreting, or translanguaging practices that occur within the classroom. This latter term, translanguaging, can refer to “the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential” (García, 2009b, p. 140). Rather than requiring the use of only a single language, which may align more closely with an English-only, submersive, or subtractive approach to English language learning, translanguaging allows students to leverage their “full linguistic repertoire” (García & Kleyn, 2016, p. 14). Incorporating translanguaging into bilingual or multilingual classrooms allows multiple languages to be used in a single classroom and provides students with the opportunity to use their languages for specific purposes (Creese & Blackledge, 2010). This approach has been adopted in many plurilingual contexts, including New York City (García & Kleyn, 2016), which allows both students and teachers to use a broad range of linguistic resources to engage content beyond the language classrooms (Flores & García, 2014).

In addition to these pedagogical approaches, language brokering also occurs between students. In Morales and Hanson’s (2005) review of the literature, they identify instances in which students interpret for teachers when professional interpreters are not available or when teachers had questions about specific vocabulary in another language. In a similar vein, Orellana (2009) describes how students at times interpret classroom instructions for their classmates who may not be able to follow all the directions provided for a particular task. Coyoca and Lee (2009) identify a range of these language brokering behaviors in a classroom, including teachers relying on students to explain to their peers how to complete tasks or to mutually support each other in different activities.

In many of these cases, the use of professional educational interpreters is more complicated, insofar as these settings are more amorphous than formally scheduled meetings, and they often include a one-to-many dynamic between the teacher and the students. Nevertheless, interpreters who can provide language services between teachers and parents allow students to remain in their classes rather than being called to interpret outside the classroom when interpreters are not available. Moreover, the inclusion of translanguaging tasks in the classroom has been found to empower bilingual students, given that these activities allow students to leverage knowledge in multiple languages to complete tasks. By bringing these language brokering or translanguaging activities to the fore, teachers may be able to redirect more procedural language brokering practices of students to more specific learning outcomes.

Conclusion

The overarching goal of this chapter is to document, by means of a cross-sectional review of the literature, where, how, and why spoken language interpreting is occurring in educational settings and recognize the pluralistic approaches that are being adopted to promote language access. In some cases, the identified practices could be considered less than ideal despite being well meaning; however, some of these challenges could be avoided by incorporating professional spoken language services as part of school district language policies and language access plans. These policy-level decisions are necessary to demonstrate the school district’s commitment to LEP students and their families (see, for instance, Ohtake et al., 2000, or Plata, 1993). Moreover, the provision of interpreting services in the case of IEP meetings is a step toward fulfilling the linguistic rights of LEP students and their families.

However, the points of contact—i.e., parent–teacher conferences, IEP meetings, and within the classroom—illustrate the need for multiple points of contact for LEP students and their families with access to professional interpreters, rather than these interactions being confined to formal meetings. Informal channels of communication seem to be missing from the discussions surrounding how families and students access information, be it in written or oral form, to engage with the school system. These additional channels of communication are often mediated by nonprofessionals and, in a number of cases, by the students themselves. Consequently, the onus of acquiring information about the school district, its policies and procedures, and the ways to navigate these systems falls squarely on the shoulders of the LEP individuals themselves. This additional work, when compared with the work required of English-speaking counterparts, creates an undue burden and may lead to differences in academic achievement or engagement. García-Carmona et al. (2019) assert the importance of building community and engaging LEP families and argue that schools should represent a space for both students and their families. As such, spoken language interpreters can help to fill these gaps and redress this imbalance.

In particular, professional interpreters can mitigate language and cultural barriers in either legally mandated or high-stakes scenarios such as IEP meetings or parent–teacher conferences. This list is by no means exhaustive, but the reviewed literature on these settings indicates the importance of professional language mediation in these contexts. Similar to interpreting in other contexts, the ability to have someone provide interpreting services who is not a party to the communicative event is particularly important to avoid the dual role conflicts of interest outlined throughout the chapter. In IEP meetings, for instance, parents may need the ability to speak freely about the support services that are being provided to their students. If the bilingual aid or staff member is a subject of concern, it would be problematic to have the same person serving as the interpreter during an IEP meeting. The same holds true in parent–teacher conferences; parents who may wish to report difficulties or challenges with another bilingual staff member may not feel comfortable having that person interpret during the conference. To avoid these dual role scenarios, professional interpreters are one solution that can mitigate many of these situations.

Moreover, the issues raised regarding the actual performance of nonprofessional interpreters or language brokers can likely be addressed by working with qualified and trained interpreters. As many of the cited works suggest, the availability and scheduling of these professionals require planning and a bit more work; however, an intentional approach to including interpreters as a holistic approach to language mediation may help avoid some of the concerns surrounding the quality of their renditions. In a similar vein, increasing levels of familiarity with languages such as Spanish in the United States may lead to situations in which multiple people involved in IEP meetings or parent–teacher conferences will know the language to a certain degree. Although this increasing bilingualism is encouraging, it gives rise to situations in which multiple parties may believe they have understood something said by an LEP family member or student. Their understandings may differ on the basis of a variety of factors, leading to disagreement or misunderstandings, thereby undermining the purpose of the meeting and potentially the linguistic rights of the LEP individual. By working with professional interpreters, all the parties involved can use their renditions as the official version, much in the same way that court interpreters provide the English language rendition that appears in the court record.

Nevertheless, the provision of greater numbers of spoken language interpreters is not necessarily the end goal, and a reactionary approach to simply add more interpreters in all educational settings may not be the solution to language access. The exclusive use and regular reliance on interpreters may result in initial gains toward access, yet Plata (1993) and Ohtake et al. (2000) note that communication that is always mediated by an interpreter may signal a potential disregard for affirmative action policies or a limited commitment to providing access to services in the home languages of students. In addition, language access and inclusion is not necessarily akin to the inclusion of an interpreter in the classroom (Rodriguez & Campbell-Whatley, 2016). This point has been raised by scholars working with signed languages, who argue for educational and health care services to be provided in the languages for students and patients (De Meulder & Haualand, 2019). That is to say, a long-term goal may be to rely on educational interpreters for higher-stakes settings such as IEP meetings or parent–teacher conferences, whereas multilingual staff might be able to provide additional avenues of communication for LEP students and their families to interact with school districts. Ultimately, the inclusion of professional spoken language educational interpreters is crucial to securing the right to language access, and greater access to their services is needed. Additional research is needed to understand the impact that they have on educational outcomes and language access. Future discussions surrounding spoken language educational interpreting will need to account for what constitutes access to education, while taking into account some of the socioeconomic, political, and legal factors that shape or constrain more inclusive practices.

Notes

1.These figures represent a significant increase in ELL students from 2000, at which time 3.8 million students had been classified as such. For more information, see https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_204.27.asp

2.Orellana (2017) and Angelelli (2017) argue for the importance of research on child language brokering and present an overview of the areas that have been studied, including its role in family and community dynamics, language development and expertise, along with its relationship to psychological and psychosocial variables of the youngsters who provide these services and those who rely on their linguistic mediation.

3.The use of the term “limited English proficient” or LEP here is intentional, given its prevalence in the literature on language policy and language access, as well as the policy directives issued by the U.S. federal government (e.g., Executive Order 13166—“Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency.”) As Ijalba (2019) indicates, however, LEP suggests a deficiency, and the term English language learner (ELL) avoids this perspective.

4.https://rid.org/rid-certification-overview/certifications-under-moratorium/. There are other means by which signed language interpreters can document their ability to interpret in K–12 educational interpreting contexts, such as the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA). For more information on its structure and process, see Schick and Williams (2004).

5.The author recognizes that this discussion is an oversimplified view of a larger educational policy debate surrounding local control and standardization/accountability (see, for instance, Graue et al., 2016 and Honig, 2006 for their discussion of this tension). However, the ability of local schools to make decisions on how state and federal policy will be implemented has increased the variability of language service provisions throughout the United States.

6.Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974).

7.This is not the only potential linguistic shift, and Orellana (2009) also indicates the challenges of relying on a child language broker who is still developing vocabulary in multiple languages.

8.“Fact Sheet: Ensuring English Learner Students Can Participate Meaningfully and Equally in Educational Programs,” U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-factsheet-el-students-201501.pdf

9.34 C.F.R. § 300.322(e). For additional information on the right to an interpreter, see the “Dear Colleague Letter: English Learner Students and Limited English Proficient Parents,” dated January 7, 2015, issued by the U.S. Department of Education.

10.A distinction should be made here in that the inclusion of translation and interpreting in the language classroom is not akin to the explicit teaching of translation or interpreting. For a broad view of the various configurations that translation teaching and programs can take, see Venuti (2017) and Sawyer et al. (2019).

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