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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium presents findings from three papers exploring how teachers and students negotiate belonging, positioning, and personhood through translanguaging pedagogies. We argue that creating translanguaging spaces provides opportunities to remedy longstanding subtractive and assimilatory schooling practices. Yet, within microinteractional moments, possibilities and tensions arise that support or threaten these humanizing aims. We present data from three elementary contexts: a dual language classroom in the Midwest and two English-medium classrooms in the Southeastern and Southwestern U.S. serving students with different multilingual backgrounds. Findings illustrate how translanguaging spaces both have the potential to reposition multilingual students as knowledgeable students who experience belonging, while also presenting tensions related to micro and macro contexts and resources to make these affirming translanguaging pedagogies possible.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 3: Languages, Literacies, and Representations

Chairs

• Lindsey W. Rowe, Clemson University

• Jessica Somerville-Braun, Skidmore College

• Faythe Beauchemin, Boston College

Papers

• Experiences of Newcomer Elementary Students Speaking Spanish in an English-Medium Classroom Open to Translanguaging - Lindsey W. Rowe, Clemson University; Katelin Smith, Clemson University

• Translanguaging and Civic Belonging in a Dual Language Bilingual Education Classroom - Jessica Somerville-Braun, Skidmore College

• Adopting Translanguaging Pedagogies with Unequal Pedagogical Resources Across Students’ Languages - Faythe Beauchemin, Boston College; Lexi Woodward, University of Arkansas

Discussant

• Margarita Gómez, Loyola University Maryland