Developing Teacher Translanguaging Interpretive Power in Science Formative Assessment Co-Design

• In Event: How Teachers Perceive and Teach Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Educators and scholars have been interested in making school science more equitable and culturally meaningful for emergent bilinguals. Despite the increasing popularity of translanguaging as a pedagogical and assessment tool, questions remain about how teachers interpret translanguaging when they do not share linguistic resources with their students. This manuscript explores the journey of one highly qualified teacher, Emily, as she participated in a teacher-researcher co-design collaborative focused on inviting students to draw on and deploy translanguaging in science formative assessment. I qualitatively analyze illustrative conversations during four sequential Trans(formative) Assessment Co-design (TAC) cycles. Findings point to the ways in which Emily began to develop interpretive power to understand (bi)multilingual work that led to more concrete, agentive actions.

Author

• Caitlin Fine, Boston College