Transladoras sin fronteras: Merging Linguistic Borderlands to Take Up Students' Translanguaging Corriente

• In Event: Educators' Perspectives on the Translanguaging  Landscape in Multilingual Educational Contexts

Abstract

Translanguaging Pedagogy is questioned as a valid and reliable instructional approach for developing bilingualism and biliteracy in Dual-Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) (Author, 2017). To address this issue, under the guidance of a school district’s Biliteracy Specialist, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) (Chatterton, Fuller, & Routledge, 2007; Greenwood et al., 1993) project was created to further develop DLBE teachers’ knowledge(s) and experience(s) regarding their instructional practices specifically in biliteracy and translanguaging. The project emphasized active participation and critical systemic transformation through collaborative study to develop, implement, and measure the effectiveness of students' bilingualism and biliteracy. This paper describes the empirical work of three DLBE teachers who embraced the Translanguaging Pedagogy and how they discovered their personal stances that influenced the collective dynamic bilingual identity of their students and themselves. By valuing and expanding Translanguaging Pedagogy in the classroom context, they developed a unit/lesson instructional design that integrated students’ linguistic repertoires and allowed spaces for flexible shifts determined by students’ linguistic needs and practices during learning (Author, 2017).

The data came from the Translanguaging PAR two-year project with three DLBE teachers from a large public-school district in the Southwest. This project began by surveying the teachers to get a better understanding of the bilingual teacher’s knowledge base and experience about biliteracy approaches and translanguaging pedagogy. This project fosters and supports a flexible model of biliteracy where two languages are used to interact with grade-level complex modalities. The data collected from this survey guided me in developing a yearlong teacher study group where Participatory Action Research was implemented using multiple resources. To evaluate the effectiveness of the Translanguaging PAR project, participants completed a pre/post survey, participated in interviews and classroom observations, and study group field notes were documented and analyzed using a constant comparative method.



Findings indicated a favorable association between active participation in the PAR, actionable plans and solutions, and the achievement of desired outcomes. The Translanguaging PAR’s first year began with a study group on biliteracy and translanslanguaging research articles in Spanish and English with the purpose of establishing a common understanding of biliteracy methods and Translanguaging Pedagogy research and theory. By the second year, the participants became transladoras, cultural and linguistic negociadoras, understanding their students’ and their own holistic experiences by drawing on collective knowledge(s) and experience(s) juntos with students and each other. They were able to merge both lados of their cultural and linguistic riverbanks; their students’ and their lived experiences, or corriente(s), so as to create equitable biliteracy, bilingual, and culturally sustaining instruction and learning for their students and themselves. 

Author

• Susana Ibarra Johnson, New Mexico State University