How Translanguaging Can Transform Teacher Education: Using Communicative Repertoires for Teacher Education in Colombia

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

Abstract

Objective
Using multimodal and digital ethnography, this year-long study makes visible how a community of seven Colombian English language teachers collaborate to make sense of, and use multilingual, multimodal, and digital literacy resources in innovative ways. This study responds to the needs for exploring and integrating communicative repertoires and translanguaging in non-English dominant contexts from the teachers’ perspective.

Research question: How do teachers negotiate and co-construct multilingual, multimodal, and digital strategies for language learning in a Colombian university?

Perspectives
This study draws on critical multilingualism, translanguaging, and communicative repertoires. Addressing multilingualism from an asset- based perspective in English language education has moved from the margins to the center of language and literacy research in the multilingual turn and the call for translingual orientations for TESOL education (May, 2013; Ortega, 2014; Flores & Aneja, 2017). Translanguaging and communicative repertoires are powerful theoretical and pedagogic tools that illuminate how to navigate semiotic and digital diversity in education. With translanguaging, García and Li (2014) advocate for the active and complex use of speaker’s linguistic and semiotic repertoires for learning. Likewise, Canagarajah (2007) and Rymes (2012) recommended the inclusion of communicative repertoires for language learning. Rymes theorizes communicative repertoires as “the collection of ways in which individuals use language and other means of communication (gestures, dress, posture, accessories) to function effectively in the multiple communities in which they participate” (p.216).

Methods
The study uses online ethnography applied to education (Parker, Webster & Marquez da Silva, 2013), and multimodal ethnography (Dicks, Sonicka, & Coffey, 2006). Data from videos, transcripts, and notes of online teacher workshops, multimodal multilingual transcripts, multimodal texts produced by the teachers, and surveys were analyzed using elements from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2104), and multimodal narrative analysis (Barkhuizen, 2014).

Results
The findings reveal how teachers struggle to include local linguistic and cultural resources, and how translanguaging and multimodality can support language teacher education through a change of perspectives.

Translanguaging in non-English dominant contexts must be contextualized and theorized in new ways. We need a theory different from bilingual contexts as the goals are different. Teachers struggled to build translanguaging spaces for monoglossic goals. Luis, one of the teachers, recognizes how using local linguistic and cultural resources is “complicated” in a TESOL context in which students are evaluated in English only.

A second finding consisted in changing perspectives for teacher education. Using multimodal narrative analysis, the study revealed how using teachers’ whole communicative repertoires is beneficial for reflection and negotiation of meaning moving from monoglossic views to translanguaging. During the online workshops teachers used their linguistic and multimodal resources. For instance, they created multilingual and multimodal teaching narratives as well as audiovisual artifacts photovoice etc.

Significance
This study shows how teachers can translate theories into contextualized practices for the benefit of their colleagues and students in non-English dominant contexts. The results contribute to local policy making on language teacher education, and future teacher preparation programs.

Author

• Rosa Alejandra Medina, University of Massachusetts - Amherst