Sustaining Translanguaging in Elementary Classrooms: The Role of Long-Term Teacher-Researcher Collaboration

• In Event: Envisioning the Possibilities for Translanguaging Pedagogies Through Teacher-Researcher Collaboration in Second-Language Contexts

Abstract

Despite the rise of translanguaging research, multilingualism has yet to be embedded in the curriculum in English-dominant K-12 contexts (García & Flores, 2013). 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. More broadly, research demonstrates the positive impact of teacher-researcher collaboration in educational settings to create change in practice and teacher beliefs (e.g., Fowler-Amato & Warrington, 2017). As such, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of teacher-researcher collaboration in developing and sustaining translanguaging pedagogies in an English-medium second-grade classroom over two years, and moreover examine how this collaboration impacted teacher and researcher perceptions of multilingualism and translanguaging pedagogies.
This study draws on theories of translanguaging (García & Li Wei, 2014) and critical and participatory approaches to design-based research to elucidate how relational dynamics, ecological structures, history, and power shaped collaborative processes and possibilities surrounding translanguaging pedagogies (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; McKinley, 2018). 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 Wei, 2014). Thus, translanguaging pedagogies are intentional approaches that center students’ multilingual identities and leverage their multilingual repertoires in instructions (García et al., 2017). The literature illustrates that, because translanguaging pedagogies demand resistance to the monolingual subjectivities inherent in school systems, there are several ideological, ecological, and practical obstacles in implementation (Allard, 2017). Thus, we contend that teacher-researcher collaboration is one way to push-back and create sustainable change (Author & Author, in press). And while a growing number of studies surrounding translanguaging pedagogies have utilized collaborative approaches (e.g. Daniel et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2020), few studies have interrogated these collaborative approaches in detail.
This study employs qualitative ethnographic methods (O’Reilly, 2012), connected to a larger multi-year participatory design research study (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), and further explores the role of collaboration in developing translanguaging pedagogies in a second-grade classroom with a Somali-American teacher and the researcher (a former co-teacher and ESL educator in the context). Data sources include over 80 hours of video-recorded classroom observation, 50 hours of audio recorded planning sessions between the researcher and teacher, four 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 perceived that the long-term collaboration not only strengthened students’ multilingual identities and learning processes but facilitated transformative change in ideologies surrounding multilingualism and further inspired critical thinking and resistance to school norms and policies. Additionally, the teacher recognized how translanguaging pedagogies shifted thinking about her own multilingual identity and practices. The significance of this study lies in the need for transformative translanguaging pedagogies that are deeply and consistently embedded in classrooms long-term, further highlighting how collaborative processes are one way towards progress in this vein.

Author

• Leah Shepard-Carey, Drake University