Examining Diverse Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Beliefs through a Translanguaging Lens

• In Event: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Literacies Through Translingual Practices and Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose and Framing
With schools today serving a new mainstream (Paris, 2015) reflective of increasing racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity in the U.S., teacher educators must prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to take a culturally and linguistically sustaining approach (Bucholtz et al., 2017; Paris & Alim, 2014) to literacy teaching. In this paper, I explore the beliefs of diverse cohorts of PSTs about literacy teaching with multilingual learners (MLs). With its emphasis on interrogating issues of power and fostering equitable education for MLs, drawing on a translanguaging framework (García et al., 2017), allowed me to examine how the PSTs’: (a) positionalities (e.g., linguistic privilege/ marginalization), (b) language ideologies, and (c) understandings of translanguaging pedagogy impacted their developing beliefs about literacy teaching with MLs.

Methods of Data Collection and Analysis
Data for this paper comes from a study of PST literacy teaching beliefs in which I used ethnographic methods (Heath & Street, 2008) to collect data (recorded class sessions, course documents, interviews) with three cohorts of PSTs in my literacy methods courses in an elementary education initial licensure preparation program in a small liberal arts college in the Northeastern US. For this paper, I coded interview transcript segments related to multilingualism and teaching MLs. Four of the PSTs who participated in the interviews were students of Color and twelve were white; two grew up in bi/multilingual households and a number of the PSTs developed bi/multilingualism through schooling/work/friendships. In the initial cycle of coding (Saldaña, 2021), I focused on the PSTs’ linguistic & cultural backgrounds, their experiences with translanguaging pedagogy (readings, observations, own teaching and learning), and their language ideologies. In the second cycle, I organized codes into groups, added/collapsed codes, and re-coded data. Throughout the process, I wrote analytic memos about the patterns in the coded data.

Findings and Importance
I found that a strong majority of the PSTs articulated language as a resource (Ruiz, 1984) orientations to translanguaging and many took a critical translanguaging stance (García et al., 2017) to literacy education for MLs. Yet, at the same time, a number of PSTs articulated understandings of bi/multilingualism that combined a fractional view of bilingualism with the holistic view (Grosjean, 1985) that underlies translanguaging theory. In other words, many PSTs still valued themselves and/or MLs performing as monolinguals in many contexts. While both the language a resource orientation and translanguaging stance aligned with asset-based, equity-oriented approaches the PSTs were taught in literacy methods courses (and throughout the program), the power of translanguaging to disrupt monoglossic ideologies and norms was not fully realized.
Implications for us as teacher educators include increased attention to fostering heteroglossic ideologies as essential to preparing PSTs to take a linguistically sustaining approach to literacy education for MLs. This includes fostering deeper reflection on PSTs’ own positionalities/privileges in developing bi/multilingualism and explicit interrogation of the language ideologies they have experienced in world language, English as a second language, and English language arts contexts.

Author

• Jessica Somerville-Braun, Skidmore College