Translanguaging Subjectivities: Bilingual Teacher Disruptions of the White Epistemological Subject

• In Event: (Re)Centering Criticality in Language Education: Exploring Translanguaging as Consequential Praxis

Abstract

Objectives
This paper draws on data collected as part of a larger critical ethnography examining the language and pedagogical practices of Spanish/English bilingual teachers in a community-based, out-of-school program (Author & colleagues, 2022; Valenzuela, 2019). The paper seeks to illuminate the translinguistic, pedagogical, and curricular responses of one bilingual teacher to the uptick in racist violence towards Latinx, translingual families in the U.S. as a result of the “Trump effect” and Iocal ICE raids.

Theoretical Framework
The current project bridges translanguaging (García, 2009) critical curriculum theory (Apple, 2004), and raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa, 2015) to explore the complex subjective prioritizations of a bilingual teacher working with translingual, immigrant youth in the U.S. These theoretical lenses facilitate a needed identification and disruption of the White/monolingual English-speaking epistemological subject of official curricula.

Methods and Data Sources
This paper is part of a larger critical ethnography (Foley & Valenzuela, 2008) of Oso Academy (pseudonym), a heritage Saturday school for indigenous and Spanish language revitalization at the Mexican American Cultural Center in a large city in Texas during the 2018-2019 academic school year. This paper centers on the experiences of Marcela (pseudonym), one of the volunteer bilingual teachers. Data sources included interviews, observations, artifacts, and video recordings of class sessions. Analysis consisted of traditional development of field notes along with standard and non-standard forms of coding in order to develop themes and attune to aporias in the data.

Findings
Findings illustrate how Marcela engaged students’ full linguistic repertoires to support learning in lessons designed specifically to address community concerns and fears of state sanctioned violence. Findings also consider the intersections of translanguaging with the subaltern subjectivities of Oso students as immigrants persecuted by racist state and federal policies.
For example, findings detail how Marcela responded to anti-immigrant police action and political rhetoric by engaging students in a lesson about the Statue of Liberty in which she and students deconstructed the messages inscribed on the monument using students’ full range of language resources across the named languages of English and Spanish.

Significance
Marcela’s pedagogical, curricular, and translinguistic engagements offer key insights into the ways bilingual teachers are able to engage racialized bilingual communities and families who are not always welcomed as educational partners in public schools. This work also provides evidence-based strategies for bilingual programs that espouse goals such as cross-cultural competence and the development of critical consciousness (Cervantes-Soon et. al., 2017). Specifically, this study reveals how the interrogation of curricular subjectivities, alongside more flexible languaging spaces, can serve as a starting point for considering the power/knowledge nexus as it privileges and denies material possibilities for bilingual learners, depending on their racialized and linguistic differences. Finally, the paper highlights critically-oriented possibilities for out-of-school programming that is responsive to minoritized communities.

Author

• Randy C. Bell, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author