"Cómo tú le pones pa'tras?" Computer Science Learning and Translanguaging in a Spanish-Medium Science Classroom

• In Event: 31.031 - Multimodal STEM Learning With Emerging Bilingual Students

Abstract

Objectives. In this presentation, we analyze a translanguaging moment (Li Wei, 2011) as emergent bilingual students learn computer science in the context of a seventh grade science classroom. Our project is a multi-year, multi-site study infusing computer science literacy in bilingual classrooms in New York City middle schools using an approach that blends translanguaging pedagogy (García, Johnson & Seltzer, 2017) with literate programming (Knuth, 1984).

Theoretical Framing. Prior studies of emergent bilingual students’ STEM learning have recognized the critical role of translanguaging (Poza, 2018; Esquinca, Araujo, & de la Piedra, 2014): how bilingual people draw on features of their communicative repertoires (Rymes, 2014) as they learn, in ways that defy socially-constructed “standard” language categories (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015). Much research on translanguaging relies on documenting evidence of alternation between named languages -- an approach which narrows what “counts” as translanguaging to a binary judgment (yes, there are multiple languages present, or no). But the translanguaging lens recognizes that people’s communication in the 21st century is more dynamic (García & Li Wei, 2014). In this analysis, we demonstrate how student translanguaging indexes not only features from different named languages, but also across and beyond everyday language, technical terminology of computing and multiple modalities (gesture, code, and images) to support students’ computational thinking (CT) practices.

Methods. We applied the moment analysis approach from applied linguistics (Li Wei, 2011), which involves analyzing the creativity and criticality of multilinguals’ practices at key moments. This presentation extracts out one moment from a larger research-practice curricular co-design project, which had been following three male focal students in a partner teachers’ Spanish-medium science classroom for a year. Ethnographic field notes, artifact-based interview (Brennan & Resnick, 2012) transcripts, and focal students’ work were analyzed through multiple stages of coding, including the participation of teachers (both from this particular classroom and others).

Results and Scholarly Significance. The moment selected demonstrates how students who may be labeled as “Spanish-speakers” and “English learners” in fact have unique communicative repertoires which they mobilize to support each other in negotiating problems that crop up during coding and which enable them to engage in CT practices. We describe aspects of the communicative repertoires of the three focal students, focusing on how they are shaped by students’ immigration and schooling experiences, and by their out-of-school technology activities. During the artifact-based interview, students re-cast each other’s questions and commentary in their own words, and use gesture, images, and code (verbal descriptions and digital representations of it) to describe to the others how they worked through bugs in their code. This research pushes the field of 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.

Authors

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

• Christopher Hoadley, New York University

• Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Brooklyn College - CUNY

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