Language↔Space↔Identity in Practice: Translanguaging and Teacher Agency in Multilingual Classrooms

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Advocacy and Activism to Transgress: Centering Ethnic and Linguistic Identities

Abstract

Translanguaging has gained prominence for its potential to disrupt dominant language hierarchies in multilingual education. Yet its enactment remains uneven under institutional and material constraints. This paper presents two ethnographic case studies of bilingual teachers in a Korean monolingual school and a U.S. Spanish-English preschool. Framed by a Language↔Space↔Identity model, findings show how teachers’ spatial design and ideological positioning shape translanguaging as a sociomaterial practice. One teacher’s classroom emerges as a fluid third space where bilingualism is normalized, while the other navigates fragile moments of resistance within monolingual structures. This study argues that translanguaging is not merely a pedagogical strategy but a sociopolitical and spatial act of justice that requires supportive infrastructures to sustain equitable and inclusive multilingual practice.

Authors

• Seongryeong Yu, Old Dominion University

• Sung Ryung Lyu, American University

• Kiyomi Umezawa, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa