Children’s involvement in interpreter-mediated parent–teacher conferences

This paper examines a corpus of audio-recorded, interpreter-mediated, Parent–Teacher Conferences (PTCs) with migrant families and children in primary schools in the provinces of Modena and Reggio-Emilia, Italy. The aim is to investigate how verbal communication develops when children are present during these meetings, namely whether and how children are involved and/or invited to speak, and how the other parties orient themselves to children’s participation. The analysis will focus on (a) the interactional moves that enable and trigger children’s participation, (b) children’s reactions after being involved in the interaction, and (c) the adults’ reactions to children’s participation. The results will show that children’s verbal participation during PTCs is very limited and is not actively promoted by the other participants. On the few occasions when children do take the floor, it is because they are invited to speak by the mediators. However, on these few occasions, the interactional strategies used by the mediators to trigger children’s participation are not effective enough to promote the full exercise of children’s agency.