Translanguaging and Educational Dignity in Science Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Theory Into Practice in Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Science classrooms are racialized spaces that often position emergent bilinguals and other minoritized youth through deficit lenses (Patterson & Gray, 2019; Martin, 2009; Nasir, 2012). We applied translanguaging and educational dignity frameworks to guide educator self-study (Laboskey, 2004; Pine, 2009) within elementary and secondary science teaching methods courses to explore how teacher candidates’ engagement with issues of language, identity, power, and belonging in science could be augmented and how, in turn, teacher candidates took up these affordances. Through analysis of course instructors’ reflections as well as artifacts from course instruction and students’ work products, we observed that teacher candidates demonstrated awareness of language ideologies in science and commitments to subverting deficit narratives about linguistically minoritized youth through critical translingual practices.

Authors

• Luis E. Poza, San José State University

• Tammie Visintainer, San José State University

• Kathryn Ribay, San Jose State University