Translanguaging Pedagogies With Young Emergent Bilinguals: Collaboration and Complexity in "Stances, Design, and Shifts"

• In Event: Unleashing and Sustaining the Potential of Translanguaging Pedagogies in Second Language Learning Contexts Through Teacher-Researcher Collaboration

Abstract

Despite the rise of translanguaging research, multilingualism has yet to be embedded into curriculum and instructional design in English-dominant K-12 contexts (García & Flores, 2014). With over 4.8 million students classified as “English learners,” and several more multilingual students in U.S. schools, there is an urgent need to develop culturally- and linguistically-sustaining approaches (Paris & Alim, 2014) that support multilingual students. As such, the purpose of this case study is to examine how a researcher and second-grade teacher designed and modified translanguaging pedagogies during literacy throughout one school year and furthermore, to explore how this collaboration shifted stances on translanguaging and created implications for future collaboration and design work.
This study draws on theories of translanguaging (García & Li, 2014) and García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s (2017) translanguaging pedagogies framework of “stance, design, and shift” to elucidate how the researcher and teacher approached and troubled translanguaging pedagogies in the classroom. Translanguaging theory critiques monolingual bias in practice and research and asserts that bilinguals have an integrated linguistic repertoire in which they strategically select linguistic features for specific communicative purposes (García & Li, 2014). In their framework, García et al. (2017) explain that teachers must take up ideologies that value students’ language backgrounds as both academic resource and integral parts of identity (stance), intentionally design instruction and assessment that integrates students’ entire linguistic repertoires (design), and modify instruction according to students’ needs (shift).Thus, this study positions translanguaging pedagogies as both vital to multilinguals’ success and sense of being in English-dominant settings, but recognizes the necessity for research in a variety of contexts and the insight that might be gained by collaborating with teachers for an extended period of time.
This study employs case study methods (Dyson & Genishi, 2005), connected to a larger multi-year design-based research study (McKenney & Reeves, 2018) to explore how the researcher and teacher approached and modified translanguaging pedagogies during year one of the study. Data sources include over 40 hours of video recorded classroom observation, 25 hours of audio recorded planning sessions between the researcher and teacher, two semi-structured interviews, materials, and classroom artifacts. Via inductive and deductive coding of planning sessions, interviews, and classroom observations (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) results demonstrate that the teacher and researcher embodied complex translanguaging stances throughout the study, given their own identities as multilinguals and a refugee (the teacher) and the pressures imposed from the school context, which further influenced their teaching. Additionally, students’ displayed initial resistance and self-doubt on their own first language skills, which indicated the need for increased and explicit opportunities to build a multilingual ecology (García & Menken, 2015) and to scaffold translanguaging (Daniel et al., 2019). Finally, results illustrated the challenges in adapting translanguaging pedagogies for students with emerging literacy skills and from oral traditions, as writing and translating became a significant source of frustration. The significance of this study lies in the need for additional studies that interrogate translanguaging pedagogies in a variety of English-dominant contexts, which may be further enhanced and sustained through collaborative approaches with teachers.

Author

• Leah Shepard-Carey, Drake University