“Everything Is in English”: Linguistic Schoolscapes as Heuristic for Cultivating Critical Language Awareness

• In Event: Addressing Issues of Equity Through Critical (Multilingual) Language Awareness in Teacher Education

Abstract

Translanguaging pedagogies have been shown to hold promise for dismantling monoglossic ideologies. However, there is still limited understanding of how to support teachers of emergent bilinguals to develop the asset-oriented stances needed to embrace translanguaging pedagogy. This qualitative study of teacher learning addresses this gap, exploring linguistic schoolscapes, or analysis of a school’s environmental print, as a means to cultivate teachers’ critical awareness of how language and power operate in schools. Findings reveal that all participating teachers embraced asset-oriented ideologies toward their students’ home languages, ranging from viewing representation as important to understanding language visibility as an issue of social justice. These findings highlight the potential (although not inevitability) of linguistic schoolscapes to support teachers in developing critical translanguaging stances.

Author

• Laura Hamman-Ortiz, University of Rhode Island