Sammendrag
This dissertation investigates how novice students with little or no knowledge or skills in interpreting for deafblind people develop their professional characteristics as interpreters for deafblind people. Through the perspective of evidence-based practice and Bildung, this study focuses on how students develop and self-transform into professionals capable of interpreting for deafblind people in a range of situations. By exploring how students develop evidence-based practice, this dissertation details how they conquer their operational space as interpreters for deafblind people and investigates how Bildung manifests itself through their construction of a professional identity.
There is a lack of research investigating how students develop an evidence-based practice and construct their professional identity as interpreters for deafblind people, and this study aimed at generating knowledge on the matter. A qualitative study was designed and focus group discussions were conducted with students at a bachelor’s program in sign language and interpreting that includes interpreting for deafblind people. The focus group discussions were conducted at three different stages of the educational program to understand how student professional development progresses. After the discussions were transcribed they were investigated using both content and critical discourse analysis in order to achieve a richer and deeper understanding of the material. The researcher in this study (the author) did this research on, for and with her own students, a process whose various advantages and disadvantages are also discussed in this dissertation.
The conclusions of the dissertation are that students develop their evidence-based practice by getting to know the person and the context, going from facing the unknown to coping with the unknown, and setting boundaries for their role as interpreters, all of which results in their conquering their operational space as interpreters for deafblind people. Students also go through a transformative process of Bildung during their education, from constructing their professional identity by mainly drawing upon discourses that were available to them before they started the program, namely, the care-needing discourse and the care-giving discourse, to mainly drawing on discourses from professional interpreters, namely, the technical discourse, the collaborative discourse and the reflective discourse.
The dissertation also includes a discussion of the author’s proximity to the field in question and to students professional development, and argues that proximity gave the author an opportunity to reveal information that otherwise would probably have remained hidden and that the author assumed the necessary distance by taking a reflexive approach during the research process and applying a “strange point of view” to the study by collaborating with her own students in generating data.
This study concludes by calling for more studies that further investigate students’ professional development towards becoming interpreters for deafblind people. This may for example be done by using larger groups of students or students from a greater number of educational institutions, by investigating if and/or how students continue to develop and self-transform, and by focusing on other aspects of student development or by including the perspective of deafblind individuals.
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