Translanguaging and Civic Belonging in a Dual Language Bilingual Education Classroom

• In Event: Belonging, Positioning, and Personhood in Translanguaging Spaces: Opportunities and Tensions in Classroom Contexts

Abstract

Purpose and Framing
Much empirical research in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) has examined how translanguaging serves to: (1) scaffold content learning and (2) affirm students’ multilingual-multicultural identities (Babino & Stewart, 2020). However, fewer studies specifically attend to connections between translanguaging and immigrant students’ identities and civic learning (Di Stefano & Camicia, 2018; Jaffee, 2016). Though standards often shape civic learning in schools, no standard captures the complexities of civic belonging, as it is interactionally co-constructed. In this paper, I draw on translanguaging pedagogy (García et al., 2016) and two learning goals from Author’s (in press) transformational civic pedagogy framework (#4 fostering inclusive civic identities and #5 engaging and expanding students’ language resources) to examine how a fourth-grade DLBE teacher, her immigrant students, and their peers drew on Spanish and English language resources to interactionally co-construct civic belonging.

Methods and Data Sources
For this paper, I draw on interview and classroom observation data collected during the third year of an ethnographic study (Heath & Street, 2008) in a Midwestern Spanish-English DLBE school serving predominantly students of Color. The teacher identified as an immigrant and approximately half of her students were from Latine/x immigrant families. Utilizing recursive coding (Saldaña, 2021) and discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2022), I analyzed how the teacher and students deployed their language resources during moments of transformational civic learning.

Findings
I found that the teacher and students utilized translanguaging to make connections across social studies and Spanish language arts in ways that co-constructed humanizing discourses about immigrants and their civic belonging. I also found the teacher made strategic choices to use Spanish or English to promote civic belonging for her students. For example, when one Latine/x student raised the dominant discourse that Latine/x immigrants “no hablan inglés” (don’t speak English), the teacher utilized rhetorical questioning in Spanish to engage her students in co-constructing a discourse of immigrants as strategic language users who are “bilingual”/“bilingüe.” However, other times her language choices reflected the dominance of English nationally and locally, such as a lesson taught in English because she believed knowing civic participation terminology in English would best allow her immigrant students to engage in civic action. This missed opportunity for students to see translanguaging as a civic resource was also a missed remedy/repair moment for me as a researcher to dialogue with her about these felt tensions in enacting translanguaging pedagogies.

Significance
These findings affirm and build on scholars’ calls for professional development that takes a critical stance (García et al., 2016) to translanguaging, by highlighting translanguaging as a resource for fostering civic engagement and belonging. With deep challenges facing U.S. democracy, encouraging students’ civic engagement through meaningful civic learning that connects in-and-out of school contexts is crucial. To that end, these findings highlight the need for more scholarly attention to local contextual factors that shape teacher and student use of translanguaging as a resource for civic learning, engagement, and belonging.

Author

• Jessica Somerville-Braun, Skidmore College