From Stance to Struggle: How Pre-Service Teachers Perceive Possibilities and Limits of Translanguaging

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Power, and Identity in Teacher Preparation: Multilingual Awareness, Academic Language, and Intersectionality

Abstract

Preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach multilingual students remains critical for teacher education (Volknant & Licandro, 2024). This study examines how PSTs develop their stance toward teaching linguistically diverse students, conceptualize multilingualism, and perceive opportunities and barriers to implementing translanguaging pedagogy. Drawing from qualitative data across one academic year, findings reveal tensions between PSTs' theoretical support for multilingualism and their practical implementation of translanguaging pedagogy. While PSTs affirm multilingualism as valuable, raciolinguistic ideologies and institutional constraints limit their ability to enact transformative translanguaging practices. This research contributes to understanding how teacher education programs can better prepare PSTs to disrupt English-dominant language hierarchies and foster linguistically inclusive classrooms that honor students' full linguistic repertoires.

Author

• Weronika Kaczmarczyk-Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign