(Re)Imagining a Translingual Self: Shifting One Monolingual Teacher Candidate's Language Lens

• In Event: 61.028 - Counteracting Monolingualism in Preservice Teacher Education Through Translanguaging

Abstract

Objectives
In order for self-defined monolingual educators to adopt pedagogical approaches that reflect a translanguaging stance (García & Li, 2014), they must uproot “compartmentalized” perspectives of language (Goodwin, 2017). They also need opportunities to construct identities and practices as insiders within translingual contexts–where neither they nor traditionally-defined bi/multilingual learners are outsiders (Canagarajah, 2013). Therefore, this study considered the following: how did one self-defined monolingual pre-service teacher negotiate the development of (1) her translingual identity and practices, and (2) translingual awareness?

Perspectives
Within Western society, languages have long been thought of as existing in separate “compartments” within bilingual learners’ minds (Canagarajah, 2013; García & Li, 2014). Rather than turning one language “off” before turning another “on,” translingual speakers creatively integrate all semiotic resources to communicate (Canagarajah, 2013; Li, 2017), demonstrating a reflective awareness and “cooperative disposition” to negotiate meaning (Canagarajah, 2013, pp. 180-181). Translanguaging represents a paradigmatic shift that may prompt educators to problematize monolingual language beliefs and adopt pedagogies that engage students’ diverse linguistic identities and practices (Canagarajah, 2013; García & Li, 2014).

Methods and Data Sources
The study considered how Elle, a self-defined monolingual English teacher candidate, negotiated her translingual identity, awareness, and practices during her enrollment in a seven-week online course in summer 2017 as a part of her TESOL certification program. Data included multimodal artifacts of Elle’s learning, reflections and lessons from her field placement in an elementary English as a Second Language classroom, and a follow-up retrospective interview conducted in spring 2018. Through integration of Wortham and Reyes’s (2017) approach to discourse analysis as narrated events with critical discourse analysis (Van Leeuwen, 2008) and multimodal social semiotics (Kress, 2004), I analyzed how Elle made sense of translanguaging as a theory and pedagogy for language teaching across linguistic and semiotic artifacts of her learning, specifically with regard to her positionality as a monolingual English speaker. In addition, I operationalized Canagarajah’s (2013) “cooperative disposition” of translingual speakers to consider whether Elle developed such a disposition.

Results
Data analysis suggests it is possible for a self-defined monolingual English teacher candidate to develop the identity, practices, and disposition of a translingual speaker. Initially, Elle perceived herself as a monolingual speaker, separate from her Arabic-speaking students and their community. With the introduction of translanguaging as theory and pedagogy in her coursework, Elle developed a new perspective of meaning-making as an interactive and fluid process of negotiation that integrates linguistic and semiotic resources. While Elle perceived herself as an outsider among bi/multilingual speakers, she was able to see herself as an insider within a translingual contact zone (Pratt, 1991).

Scholarly Significance
This study demonstrates how one monolingual English speaking teacher candidate developed and demonstrated her translingual awareness in relation to her translanguaging pedagogies, despite the monolingual mindset woven throughout her English-centric language identity and practices. The findings from this study speak to what learning experiences might support teacher candidates in envisioning translingual identities and practices as well as to adopt translanguaging pedagogies that make students’ multilingual identities and practices central instead of peripheral.

Author

• Christina M. Ponzio, Michigan State University