Multilingual Chit-CHAT? How Social and Material Factors Foster Classroom Translanguaging Interactions

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-16 - Translanguaging

Abstract

This study draws on a CHAT framework to analyze factors influencing elementary students’ use of translanguaging during cross-age peer learning interactions. Analyzing the final year of video recording and transcript data, the study finds that material conditions helped drive the fourth grader big buddies’ frequent use of translanguaging for task management situations, arising from an interplay of lesson features, hierarchical roles, perceived rules, goals and the available tools. Analysis shows how material and social factors influence the development of the multilingual interactions between “big buddy” fourth graders and their “little buddy” kindergartners. Implications include elevating he importance of considering task load and the complexity and number of tools available.

Authors

• James Groff, University of Maryland - College Park

• Johanna M. Tigert, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland - College Park

• Megan Madigan Peercy, University of Maryland - College Park

• Rebecca Deffes Silverman, University of Maryland - College Park