Visual Artifacts as Scaffolds in Multilingual Third-grade Classrooms: How Do Visual Scaffolds Support Engineering and Translanguaging

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Abstract

This study considered over 200 visual classroom artifacts in multilingual third-grade elementary classrooms in the United States where teachers introduced the engineering design process and translanguaging practices. Artifacts were created by teachers or commercially produced and displayed on classrooms bulletin boards, projected in PowerPoints, or designed by teachers for student use. Informed by social semiotic theories of multimodality and theories and practices of translanguaging, researchers conducted qualitative analyses. Through consensus coding cycles, they identified five categories for these visual artifacts: 1) Engineering, 2) Engineering with Languaging, 3) Integrated - Both Engineering and Translanguaging, 4) Languaging with Engineering, and 5) Translanguaging.

Authors

• Mary B. McVee, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Jessica Swenson, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Duncan Mullins, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Dameeni Lagad, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• YueQiu Zhang, University at Buffalo - SUNY