Considering Dramatic Improvisation to Support Multilingual Communication and Translanguaging in a Teacher Education Course

• In Event: Imagining a World Anew: Designing Teacher Education to Support Expansive Visions of Multilingual Learners

Abstract

This paper explores how participating in dramatic improvisation-based ("improv") activities in a teacher education course supported—and did not support— multilingual English language teachers' communication in languages and modalities other than English. Past research has found that participation in improv, when integrated with an explicitly critical, asset-based lens oriented toward linguistic justice, can foster multilinguals' use of multiple languages and translanguaging (e.g., Sanchez et al., 2022; Wells, 2018). However, less is known about the use of dramatic improvisation as a means of stimulating multilingual, multimodal communication in teacher education courses; thus, this is the focus of the present study.
The author conducted an auto/ethnographic self-study case study (e.g., Cohen et al, 2011) to investigate a 16-week Improvisational Teaching (pseudonym) class, focusing on two multilingual (Russian/English and Urdu/English) teachers of multilingual students. The research question was: 1) in what ways, and for what provided reasons, did these multilingual teacher education students communicate in modalities other than English?
The study drew upon Miller et al.'s (2019) framework to conceptualize the institutional conditions found to support and constrain multi/translingualism. Additionally, the study integrates Novosel & Dahlberg's (2018) expanded definition of translanguaging to incorporate non-verbal, affective dimensions of communication, proposing that "translanguaging be understood in relation to expressions of affect, intensity, and vitality..." (Novosel & Dahlberg, 2021, p. 42). Data sources included video and audio recordings (n=13) of class sessions, students' written class artifacts, and 2 video-recorded interviews with each focal participant. Discourse-based artifacts were imported into NVIVO. Analysis was guided by Jackson & Mazzei’s (2013) “plugging in” approach for relating qualitative data to theory in a way that borrows from both theoretical dedication and induction, along with iterative cycles of thematic coding. During analysis of the text-based data sources, we identified 2 focal moments from video recorded data for microethographic "nexus analysis" (Wohlwend, 2020).
Findings indicate that focal students drew upon their heritage languages (Russian and Urdu) in limited ways during improvisational exercises (e.g., for landmarks, family members, or with exclamations like "huzzah!"), but only when tasked with "initiating" dramatized scenes. One student expressed hesitation to speak in Russian (despite her own pro-translanguaging stance), citing her fears of being "judged" following Russia's declaration of war against Ukraine, and of increasing the "psychological distance" between herself and her English-speaking classmates. However, both focal students noted that certain exercises (such as a primarily nonverbal "emotion scarves" activity) allowed them to engage in embodied "emotional communication” which transcended language, even while they felt constrained to communicate chiefly in English. Both expressed intentions to enact translanguaging-based improvisational activities in educational contexts with a greater proportion of multilingual speakers.
This study points toward the need to expand beyond considerations of the institutional factors which facilitate or constrain multi-/translingual communication to explore factors at the peer-level. Additionally, more research is needed into the macro-level political conditions influencing teacher education students' decisions not to engage in translanguaging. Findings also suggest the need to theorize the affective dimensions of multi/translingual communication (e.g., “emotional communication”) in arts-based teacher education courses.

Authors

• Laura Carter-Stone, University of Kentucky
  Presenting Author

• Basak Cermikli Ayvaz, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author