A Space for Translanguaging: Secondary Language Arts Students’ Critical Awareness While Engaged in Online Discussions

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Translanguaging and Criticality in Multilingual Classrooms and Communities (Table 1)

Abstract

With participants from language arts classes in a rural high school, this study explored students’ translanguaging and critical awareness through a qualitative discourse analysis of text-based online classroom discussions. Investigating students’ discussions allowed for tracing the ways students engaged in translanguaging practices while sharing their critical awareness and beliefs about race and identity. Students’ linguistic and cultural heritage intersected with their awareness of historical and political events, underlying their understandings about race. While offering various definitions of the term “race,” students used multiple languages to reveal their beliefs and awareness of current and historical events. Students were inventive with languages, incorporating translanguaging in their comments, showing how CMD afforded opportunities for students to expand their perspectives about racism and equality.

Authors

• Hannah Park, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Diane L. Schallert, University of Texas at Austin