“I learned how to challenge”: Middle School Bilingual Teachers’ Translanguaging, Biliteracy, and Advocacy Practices

• In Event: On Healing Linguistic Wounds: Bilingual Latinx Maestres Expanding Biliteracies Through Critical Pedagogies and Humanizing Methodologies

Abstract

Objectives
Research has shown that translanguaging can contribute to decolonizing bilingual classrooms (Wei, 2022; Wei & García, 2022). To support teachers’ efforts to democratize schools, we developed an online professional development (OPD) in Spanish rooted in culturally and linguistically relevant biliteracy practices, including translanguaging. In this qualitative study we ask: Does the OPD support middle school bilingual teachers’ translanguaging stance and advocacy efforts? If so, how? While studies have identified how teachers employ a translanguaging stance inside their classrooms, this study explores teachers’ work beyond the classroom to advocate for decolonizing biliteracy opportunities.

Theoretical Framework
This study is guided by a translanguaging stance (García et al, 2017), which challenges monolingual norms that tend to be omnipresent in schools, including bilingual classrooms (García, 2011, 2013). A translanguaging stance is a language ideology that values multilingualism as an asset (García & Wei, 2014); taking a translanguaging stance is an act of social justice that supports decolonization of classrooms (García et al., 2017; Wei & García, 2022). Translanguaging pedagogies support the biliteracy development of multilingual students in socially just, linguistically inclusive ways (García & Kleifgen, 2020).

Methodology
We draw on data from 45-60 minute semi-structured Zoom interviews (Brown & Danaher, 2019) with eight middle school bilingual teachers (MSBTs). All participants (see Table 1) completed 36 hours of asynchronous OPD in Spanish. We analyzed the data iteratively using Dedoose software and applied a priori codes from the literature on translanguaging stance and pedagogies. In the second round of coding, we explored teacher advocacy and applied deductive codes based on participants’ statements. Each author was the first coder on half of the interview transcripts and the second coder on the other half. We identified and discussed coding discrepancies and reached 100% agreement.

Findings
All MSBTs advocated for more democratic biliteracy opportunities for multilingual students with colleagues, administrators, students, and their own family members. One participant, Yessica, challenged a summer school curriculum that was not relevant to the multilingual Migrant Education students it aimed to serve. She stated, “Another thing that I learned is, how to challenge, right? How to challenge administrators for our multilingual learners.” When she shared her curriculum concerns with an administrator, she was asked to research alternative curriculum options and submit a proposal. Yessica researched and wrote a proposal advocating for a summer curriculum that was more culturally and linguistically responsive. Her proposal was approved and Migrant Education summer school students in her region now engage with a more relevant curriculum. While teacher advocacy was not an explicit goal of our project, it was apparent across the interviews and supported the decolonization of biliteracy opportunities (Wei, 2022).

Scholarly Significance
This study adds to the dearth of existing literature about MSBTs and explores how an asynchronous OPD in Spanish supported bilingual teachers’ advocacy. The MSBTs evidenced a translanguaging stance through their advocacy for more equitable biliteracy opportunities for multilingual students. They combatted norms and policies they perceived to be inhibiting progress toward social justice (García et al., 2017).

Authors

• Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica, University of California - Davis

• Allison Briceno, San José State University