Middle School Arabic-Speaking Teacher and Students Engaging in Social Studies Inquiry Through Translanguaging

• In Event: Addressing Educational Equity for Immigrant and Multilingual Learners: Instructional Practices Across Educational Settings

Abstract

This study reports how an Arabic-speaking middle-school teacher made meaning through translanguaging to support her Arabic-speaking sixth-grade emergent bilinguals during social studies inquiry and how students responded. Findings reveal that the presence of newcomers motivated the teacher and students to use translanguaging and supported all students’ bilingual development. Mediating between everyday bilingual registers and the bilingual registers of disciplinary language enabled students to meaningfully engage in disciplinary learning through translanguaging. Besides the teacher, students also play agentive roles in supporting translanguaging stance and shifts. This study identifies supports needed to promote the development of students’ and teachers’ disciplinary registers both in English and the home language to promote sustained translanguaging for subject-matter learning in the context of English-medium disciplinary classrooms.

Author

• Mina Hernandez Garcia, University of Michigan