Advancing Bilingual Special Education: Translanguaging in Content-Based Story Retells for Distinguishing Language Development From Disability

• In Event: Language Policies and (Trans)Languaging Practices

Abstract

Many existing assessments for deciding the potential special education needs of emergent bilinguals are either normed on monolingual students or normed on bilingual students through monolingual data collection (Hamayan, Marler, Sánchez-López, & Damico, 2013; Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015; Perkins, 2005). To address this issue, I report on a recent study using translanguaging in dynamic assessment with six middle school emergent bilinguals. Utilizing bilingual language sample analysis of content-based story retells, coded with the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software, I demonstrate how emergent bilinguals are able to produce more language and content knowledge when given the freedom to translanguage. These quantitative data may improve decisions distinguishing language disorder from difference and address issues of disproportionality in special education.

Author

• Steve Daniel PRZYMUS, Texas Christian University