Broadening What Science Educators Respond To: Translanguaging as Sense-Making Practices Students Leverage When Problematizing Phenomena

• In Event: Science Teaching and Learning Toward Collaborative Social Transformation and Justice

Abstract

Objectives and Framing: Responsive Teaching focuses on how teachers support student learning through eliciting, noticing, and responding to students’ reasoning (Robertson, Scherr, & Hammer, 2016; Thompson, Hagenah, Kang, Stroupe, & Braaten, 2016). Justice-oriented responsive pedagogies must also identify and respond to students’ communicative and cultural resources to promote sense-making (Bang, Brown, Calabrese Barton, Rosebery, & Warren, 2017). This is particularly important for students like emergent multilingual learners (EML) who are often positioned as unprepared to learn (Valenzuela, 1999). Translanguaging, defined as “the process by which bilingual students and teachers engage in complex discursive practices in order to ‘make sense’ of, and communicate in, multilingual classrooms” (García & Sylvan, 2011, p. 389), can inform justice-oriented responsive pedagogies that support science learning for EML. When engaging in translanguaging practices, multilingual learners draw from one communicative repertoire that comprises one or more linguistic systems (e.g., Spanish, English), rather than separate languages, as well as non-linguistic communicative resources, like gestures.
This study investigates the importance of identifying and responding to the translanguaging practices of elementary-aged EML when problematizing electrical phenomena. Findings suggest that students used multiple communicative resources when co-constructing knowledge about circuits and electrical resistance, and that the instructor influenced the context’s communicative expectations.

Methods: This study took place in an out-of-school time science program for elementary EML. Students investigated electrical phenomena and worked in groups to co-construct explanatory models. I collected video recordings of sessions and student-produced artifacts; both sources were rich for studying students’ reasoning. The former yielded more information on students’ translanguaging practices, while the latter helped me explore translanguaging practices across modalities.
Using qualitative methods, I focused my analysis on turn-talk level translanguaging events (Author, 2020), defined as interactions between two or more speakers about a specific topic. I analyzed the exchanges to understand: (1) students’ models of electrical phenomena; and (2) translanguaging practices students and/or the instructor engaged in when proposing and evaluating models.

Results: The students and the instructor coordinated multiple semiotic resources when proposing and evaluating models. For instance, Yesenia modeled how a conductor’s thickness affected the brightness of a lamp, first using Spanish resources to claim that the thickness determined how much space the electricity had to move through; she then used English resources to explain that thicker conductors allowed electricity to move faster. This exchange illustrates the multiple ways students communicate their conceptual understanding that educators must respond to.
Mapping the timelines of translanguaging practices during the program’s last session revealed the following features: (i) the instructor and the students used Spanish and English resources throughout the session; and (ii) students coordinated English and Spanish resources only when (in)directly prompted by the instructor.

Significance. These findings contribute to our understanding of how responding to students’
translanguaging can support equitable and responsive science teaching and learning. Transformative science learning must include opportunities for students to leverage multiple semiotic resources in the service of co-constructing knowledge. Additionally, justice-oriented responsive pedagogies play a crucial role in creating those opportunities through identifying, valuing, and leveraging students’ translanguaging practices.

Author

• Enrique (Henry) Suárez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst