Developing a Translanguaging Co-Stance: Teacher-Researcher Collaborative Inquiry in a Mandarin-English Dual Language Bilingual Education Classroom

• In Event: Teachers’ Experiences With Translanguaging Theory and Pedagogy Across Contexts

Abstract

Purpose and Framing
Translanguaging pedagogies advocate for flexible and dynamic use of language and other semiotic resources in teaching and learning to foster creative, critical learning and decolonize monolingual hegemony (García et al., 2021). While translanguaging approaches have been embraced mostly by researchers and teachers of minoritised students (e.g., García & Kleyn, 2016), others are cautious about its overly transformative promise in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) contexts, particularly those involving languages of different socio-political statuses and values (usually English and a partner language, e.g., Fortune & Tedick, 2019; Ballinger et al., 2017). It is therefore imperative to refine translanguaging theory and practice to address the unique circumstances and needs in DLBE programs.

Teacher-researcher collaborative inquiry has been instrumental in shedding light on contextual demands and affordances of teaching and learning, which holds the potential to help both parties develop a more nuanced understanding of translanguaging pedagogies. Elaborating on a university-school study on the strategic and purposeful use of translanguaging allocation policy (Sánchez et al., 2018) in a Mandarin-English DLBE program in the U.S., this study aims to unpack the dynamic, complex processes involved in teacher-researcher collaborations, particularly their constant negotiations of translanguaging co-stance (Author 1 & colleague, 2020).

Methods and Data Sources
Taking the form of participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), Author 1 and an in-service Mandarin teacher worked together to co-design translanguaging pedagogies in a Grade 3 Chinese DLBE classroom where the majority of the students were English-dominant speakers. During the whole process they engaged in equitable forms of dialogue and listening to openly discuss, negotiate, and develop their translanguaging co-stance in iterative ways. Data collection included classroom and design/debrief meeting recordings, observational field notes, and teacher and students’ artifacts and interviews throughout the school year of 2018-19. Open coding was used to identify salient, recurring themes, highlighting key critical moments of dissonance (Delaney, 2015) experienced by the teacher and the researcher, which characterized their evolving perspectives and teaching/research practices in relation.

Results and Significance
We identified four key critical moments of dissonance whereby the teacher’s and researcher’s self-doubts, confusions and misgivings constituted a constant negotiation process regarding their translanguaging co-stance, co-design, and co-shifts. The findings revealed the complex, discursive process of developing translanguaging pedagogies in a Mandarin classroom where English hegemony reigns both inside and outside school. Although the researcher and teacher held almost the opposite views toward translanguaging initially, they gradually developed shared understandings about the need for a more comprehensive, critical, and contextualized lens to translanguaging pedagogies and to learn how to orchestrate translanguaging spaces in DLBE programs while privileging student use of Mandarin. This study underscores the need for university and school partners to engage in continuous action, reflection and evaluation “juntos/together” (García, et al., 2017, xii) to grapple with different contextual factors and to learn to expand each other’s repertoires of practice. Teacher-researcher collaboration centering on prolonged grounded engagement and productive reflections on moments of dissonance could generate evidence-based, practitioner-informed, and context-appropriate applications and knowledge of translanguaging in DLBE programs.

Authors

• Zhongfeng Tian, Rutgers University - Newark

• Sunny Man Chu Lau, Bishop's University