Patterns of classroom discourse in an integrated, interpreted elementary school setting

The purpose of this study was to describe the patterns of classroom discourse experienced by an integrated deaf child with full-time interpreting services in an elementary setting. The child was videotaped for 3 hours during classroom instructional time. The videotapes were analyzed to determine patterns of discourse between the child and the teacher and the child and the interpreter, as well as to gauge the deaf student's accessibility to teacher-class discourse. It was found that the deaf student interacted predominantly with the interpreter; in fact, this student received more direct instruction from the interpreter than from the teacher. The discourse to which the student was exposed was largely academic, rather than cultural or social. Findings are discussed in terms of the extent to which implicit classroom discourse and cultural knowledge were inaccessible to the deaf student.