Ethical motivationtesting the impact of values and beliefsin interpreter education

Resumen

This dissertation explores motivational aspects of interpreter education from theviewpoint of the ethics of care, using a mixed-methods empirical approach.The main hypothesis is that ethical motivation directly influences participants¿perception of the variables: perceived interest, perceived usefulness, and perceiveddifficulty. As a main objective, this study aims to improve educational practice ininterpreting by offering a deeper understanding of how ethical motivation (includingvalues and beliefs) affects perceived difficulty in interpreting exercises in groups ofstudents and volunteers. As secondary objectives, the dissertation analyses resultswhen performing retour interpreting in the language pair Spanish/English, and alsoexamines secondary results with speeches from different settings. Participants arestudents of interpreting at university, and volunteer interpreters at Social Forums.The dissertation is framed within the perspective of technofeminism and theethics of care, and it explores ethical values and beliefs in the study of motivationalaspects in interpreter education. Ethical motivation, and emancipatory ethicalvalues and beliefs in particular, are studied in the spirit of technofeminism asan ethical approach to freedom of knowledge and research, where emotional andfeminist aspects have been historically neglected. Constructing knowledge froma 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) cognition scaffolding bringslong-neglected aspects, such as emotions, into interpreter education. Motivationnot only belongs in the realm of emotions, it also feeds from other feelings andperceptions the interpreting students may have, largely influencing the way theysee their educational process, and themselves. The values and beliefs exploredthrough the framework of the ethics of care are present here not just in the studyof motivational constructs and variables but, crucially, in a wider perspectivewhere femininity, embodiment, and ethical choices are at the heart of educationalactivities and research.5 thesis-sans.pdf The results on ethical motivation, and on retour interpreting provide relevantconclusions, not just pedagogically speaking, but also in ethical and motivationalterms. The results are clear and simple: participants did not care whether they wereinterpreting into A or into B; their perception of interest, usefulness, and difficultyvaried solely according to the topic or the context of the video (whether from a SocialForum, or an institutional setting). The different groups of participants valuedSocial Forum videos higher than institutional videos, both in perceived interestand perceived usefulness. The empirical results obtained for ethical motivation areof very high statistical significance. The motivation elicited by videos of SocialForums is sharply higher for every student group tested, and even stronger for theMalmö Social Forum group of ad-hoc volunteer interpreters. In all settings, asethical motivation increases, perceived difficulty decreases.Thus, ethical motivation directly influences perceptions of interest and usefulnessin participants, in a positive manner, as well as perceived difficulty, which decreasesas the positive motivational variables increase. Furthermore, retour interpreting isnot perceived as more difficult than interpreting into A, which may encourage theinclusion of retour interpreting as an integral part of the curriculum.