Educational Interpreting: How It Can Succeed

How Might Learning through an Educational Interpreter Influence Cognitive Development?

How Might Learning through an Educational Interpreter Influence Cognitive Development? Brenda Schick Put simply, educating children with the use of an interpreter is an educational experiment. Although published demographic data documents the number of children who are being educated in classrooms with educational interpreters (Kluwin, Moore, and Gaustad 1992), no studies have been done to document how well these students are doing. For all children, deaf or hard of hearing and hearing , the goal of education is not just to attain and recall factual information. The true goal of education is to develop cognitive skills that will serve as the foundation for later learning and participation in society. The development of our cognitive systems begins at birth and continues throughout adulthood. As a general concept, cognition can be described as the various forms of knowing: perceiving, remembering, imagining, conceiving, judging , and reasoning (Flavell, Miller, and Miller 2002; Goswami 2002; Kuhn 1988). Cognitive development involves maturation in many domains such as being able to think more abstractly and from multiple perspectives, to integrate knowledge about the world and abstract thought, to solve problems, to imagine, and to empathize. As children and adults learn, they are organizing and reorganizing their cognitive system. They are learning how to logically reason about the world and people, for example, learning how one’s thoughts and beliefs may differ from the thoughts and beliefs of those around them. They develop theories about many domains; for example, related to physics, they learn how things fall, how solids work, and how to figure the velocity and trajectory of flying balls. Many researchers view children as little scientists in that children are accumulating evidence about how the world works and how people interact and are using this evidence to construct theories, much like a scientist would do (Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl 1999). As children observe patterns of evidence, they formulate theories, and they test those theories on new evidence. If the new observation does not fit their theory, they modify the theory. 73 As children grow older, they become more adept as problem solvers. Older children view themselves as active, constructive agents, capable of selecting and transforming information (Kuhn 1989, 2000). Throughout the school years, children develop metacognitive skills as they gain a better understanding of the process of thinking and factors that influence it. They are more capable of cognitive self-regulation, the process of continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful efforts, which is a strong predictor of academic success (Joyner and Kurtz-Costes 1997; Zimmerman and Risemberg 1997). They become better able to recognize when they have not understood a message and to identify the source of their misunderstanding (Markman 1977, 1979). Schools and classrooms provide a rich source of information to children so they can develop these theories and cognitive organizations. Basically, schools are complex social systems that surround children with interaction and modeling that are essential to cognitive development. Both adults and children use the social interaction that occurs among humans and the contexts of the interactions as raw material for cognitive development. Within theories of education, many educators advocate a Vygotskian-inspired philosophy in which the child is not an independent discoverer of knowledge and theories (Kozulin 2003; Wertsch 1985a). A Vygotskian framework to education promotes assisted discovery in which both teachers and peers can guide a child’s learning with explanations, demonstrations, and verbal prompts (Rogoff 1998; Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch and Tulviste 1992). The child’s interactions with other individuals, both adults and children who are important to him or her, are central to the child’s cognitive development. As stated by Vygotsky (1978), “Each function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological)” (57). Often, this philosophy of cognitive development is termed a sociocultural model because cognitive development occurs in the context of social discourse. Participation in interactions with others is not the only factor that leads a child to construct knowledge and theories of how people and things operate. Language also plays a critical role in this framework (Bruner 1990; Nelson 1996; Wertsch 1985b). According to Nelson (1996), language serves the functions of medium, mediator, and tool of thought, which are all different. First, language is the medium of social interaction. It is the means by which humans interact with one another. It is also a medium of thought, carried out in terms...