Pushing the Boundaries of Translanguaging: Documenting Bilinguals' Practices in Computer Science

• In Event: 77.042 - Translanguaging Embodied: Students' Expanded Translanguaging Practices Across Contexts

Abstract

Is computer coding translanguaging? Emergent bilinguals translanguage (García & Li Wei, 2014), in ways that defy categorization into named languages (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015). Importantly, students’ practices encompass not just linguistic, but social and semiotic features, and “those outside of themselves which, through use, become part of their bodily memory (e.g., computer technology)” (García & Kleifgen, 2018). Computer science education (CS ed) classrooms offer a unique context for noticing how students’ languaging “goes beyond” named languages. New “Computer Science for All” (CS for All) initiatives have prompted schools to teach bilingual students about, with, and through computer code. These technology-integrated learning environments offer new semiotic resources that influence what literacies emerge.
This study expands what “counts” as translanguaging by documenting multimodal ways that middle-school-aged emergent bilinguals make meaning with CS concepts and practices, and as they develop computational thinking (Brennan & Resnick, 2012). This documentation can serve as indicators of learning and as entry points for students to develop new literacies.
Our particular lens on translanguaging theory (García & Li Wei, 2014; Li Wei, 2018) views languaging as a process whereby people coordinate material features (e.g. technologies and other artifacts) in their environments (Thibault, 2017). This lens highlights the role of students’ embodied expressivity as they interact with teachers, other students, computer programs, content, and lived experiences.
This analysis stems from a larger project to develop an equitable approach to serving emergent bilinguals in K-12 CS ed. Our data collection took place over a year in three NYC public middle school classrooms integrating CS: one a Spanish-medium 7th grade science classroom, and two dual language bilingual language arts 6th and 7th grade classrooms. Most of the students were newcomers from Latin American countries.
Our methodology was guided by the study of multimodality (Jewitt, 2013), systematically attending to meaning-making across communicational modes (gesture, gaze, technological affordances, artifacts). We also applied the moment analysis approach from applied linguistics (Li Wei, 2011), which involves analyzing the creativity and criticality of multilinguals’ practices at critical moments. Student work samples, observations of classroom lessons and focal students, and group interviews were collected and qualitatively analyzed through multi-stage coding collaboratively with teachers (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña, 2014).
As students performed computational practices like debugging and remixing Scratch code, they spontaneously translanguaged in innovative ways. They drew invented code blocks, used idiosyncratic terms for features in the programming environment, and used gestures, features from subject-specific discourse, anime cartoons, pop culture, and their home languages. Unique languaging possibilities emerged when students with their particular backgrounds and experiences came together with the interface of Scratch.
This research unites two fields that are rarely in dialogue: bilingual education and CS ed. In examining how students translanguage while they develop computational thinking, this research pushes bilingual education to recognize the multimodal/embodied translanguaging that is part of emergent bilinguals’ learning, and pushes CS ed to design contexts for computing that build on students’ language practices. Moreover, it brings into question how computer code may function as an element in students’ communicative, semiotic repertoire.

Authors

• Sara Vogel, Graduate Center, City University of New York

• Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Brooklyn College - CUNY

• Christopher Hoadley, New York University

• Kate Menken, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York