Developing a Theory of a Linguistic Otherwise in Science Education Research and Classrooms

• In Event: Translenguando en STEM: Conceptualizing Multilingual STEM Education as a Distinct Ontology

Abstract

Mr. B (Table 2) is a 7th-grade teacher adapting his curriculum to engage with his multilingual learners’ (ML) multiple ways of communication. In this interaction, the author and Mr. B engage with MLs’ models around collisions, deformation, and damage. The students’ models represented a related phenomenon of their choice. I use this vignette to highlight the teacher’s expansive attunement to the multimodal ways of communication MLs use to express science ideas and their sensemaking in science. Mr. B values the colors students used, the relational interactions with students, and how they come together to witness a ML's explanation of an everyday phenomenon. When attuning to MLs' multiple ways of communication, Mr. B and the author are examining how students use language expansively for science (Author, 2024a). This theoretical piece argues for a unique disciplinary relationship between translanguaging and explaining phenomena in science teaching and learning that is more than “STEM in another language.”

Sensemaking in science is described as a dynamic process of building and revising explanations of a natural or designed phenomenon (Odden & Russ, 2019, pp. 191–192). As a construct, sensemaking describes the relationship between individuals and knowledge in science. However, there is variability in how it is operationalized in science practice for MLs. Sensemaking in science in practice has served as a euphemism for correcting misconceptions, rather than embracing multiple ways of knowing. This could look like correcting and evaluating students’ language practices against a dominant standard (i.e., academic English language. Translanguaging and raciolinguistics as theories help to desettle systems of dominion within sensemaking in science. Translanguaging research has shown promise in supporting ML's disciplinary and language learning (Author, 2023b). Translanguaging theory expands what counts as language practices, specifically incorporating multimodal/embodied ways of communication (i.e., gestures, images, choreographies; Blackledge & Creese, 2017). Raciolinguistics confirms how language and race are interlinked ontologies or ways of being within the world (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

Crawley (2017) describes an “otherwise” as a practice. This practice examines and (un/de)settles the systemic powers towards a reimagining and possibility of thriving. Language can be one way in which individuals can attune to the heterogeneity in ways of knowing and being within sensemaking in science. Language is therefore a medium in which ideologies, everyday experiences, and cultural wealth are communicated and forged to make meaning (Bakhtin, 2010; Vossoughi, 2014). Pedagogically, this looks like learning environments where students draw from multiple semiotic resources to refine and explain phenomena in science (see Figure 1). For example, students are using multiple languages and drawings and models to explain everyday phenomena (e.g., collisions in “subway surfer”). Translanguaging is therefore an attunement to MLs’ heterogenous language practices to reject and rethink monolingual and monomodal learning environments. Therefore, one way to orient to a linguistic otherwise in science is to interrogate how language is used to build and refine explanations of different phenomena. Using language for science examines how language is experienced and how meaning unfolds within interaction, space, and time (Ochs, 2012).

Author

• Samuel Lee, California State University - Long Beach