Paper 4: Climate Tech Journalism: Engineering Climate Futures through the Voices of Multilingual and Multidialectal Youth

• In Event: Reimagining Researcher-Participant Relations in Engineering and Computing Education

Abstract

Purpose
Learners experience science and engineering in English-dominant contexts where their lived experiences and languages are often overlooked. This reality demands justice-oriented approaches where the voices and lived realities of communities are centered (McGowan & Bell, 2020; Tan et al., 2019). When researchers are invited to record learners' experiences, we must consider our role in helping to resist dominant structures that marginalize learners and their ways of knowing. We amplify the strengths of multilingual youth to critically analyze and communicate climate tech and engineering in their community while enhancing their capacity to participate in engineering design practices in culturally meaningful ways (Nazar et al., 2019; Authors, 2019).

Theoretical Framework
Translanguaging is a justice-oriented framework that breaks down dominant language norms by empowering youth to use their language and cultural resources to create meaning (García, 2019; García & Wei, 2015; Suarez, 2020). Through translanguaging, we challenge dominant ideologies about language and what constitutes language, particularly colonial approaches to communicating science and engineering (Authors, 2025). Through this lens, we observe ways learners push back on colonial ways of doing and communicating about science and engineering through climate tech journalism.

Data and Methods
The research team developed a 20-lesson, hyper-localized climate tech journalism curriculum called [anonymous], which engages sixth-grade students in learning about engineering design, climate technology, and engineering communication. Translanguaging practices are included in the curriculum to support learners in developing multilingual, multidialectal climate tech journalism for their communities. Data for this study comes from the first two years of partnerships with four K-8 schools in Pepperville (pseudonym). We collected audio and video data, artifacts, and semi-structured interviews. We transcribed and coded the transcripts in two rounds: 1) initial and in-vivo codes, and 2) descriptive codes (Charmaz, 2014; Saldana, 2015).

Findings
The findings show while multilingual and multidialectal students bring in aspects of their cultural and lived experiences during class discussions, many students in linguistically diverse classes are hesitant to use non-dominant linguistic practices in their public-facing climate tech journalism artifacts. The learners see their linguistic repertoires as valuable for communicating with others and connecting with their peers. Those who did not use other languages and dialects in their work cited using “formal” or “basic English” to communicate with a broader audience. Simultaneously, they describe the marginalization of their languages or cultures at school, among their peers, and even in the Pepperville communities, as they explain why they did not use other languages in their projects.

Contributions
Participants offer their experiences as gifts to research. As designers and researchers, we must enable culturally and linguistically diverse students to exercise their cultural knowledge and incorporate their perspectives. This work uncovers the ways in which translanguaging supports aspects of students' cultural ways of knowing in diverse settings, while also revealing barriers to students using non-dominant languages for engineering communication. Research shows that multilingual youth perceive English as the language for engineering (Authors, 2020). And we must continue to challenge these notions through design and research.

Authors

• L. Clara Mabour, Tufts University

• Greses Perez, Tufts University

• Kristen Wendell, Tufts University

• Fatima Rahman, Tufts University

• Chelsea Andrews, Tufts University