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The language of ciencia: Translanguaging and learning in a bilingual science classroom
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
Abstract
Much attention is now given to academic language, particularly in content areas such as science, amid persistent achievement disparities between students classified as English Language Learners, and more recently, Long Term English Learners, and their English-proficient peers. This attention has fueled debate about the precise features of such language and the best ways to help students develop them. This work uses data from ethnographic observation and recordings of student interactions of a fifth grade cohort in a bilingual education program to show that by allowing students ample use of their full bilingual repertoires, extensive collaboration, and authentic experience and exposure to target language varieties, they are supported in their learning of new content and linguistic forms. The paper argues for a translanguaging perspective to teaching, whereby language and language acquisition are framed as social meaning-making processes and standardized forms are questioned, such that students can leverage familiar communicative practices and develop a critical awareness of target discourses including the so-called language of science. The paper closes with a precaution about oversimplifying translanguaging pedagogies to a linguistic free-for-all, stressing the importance of authentic input in target forms if these are expected outcomes.
... If at least one important goal of translanguaging is to support learners learning of the subject matter, how exactly would translanguaging add to learners' experience? One possibility is that translanguaging could support transfer from the children's first language (Poza, 2018), a strategy that might be particularly useful in the early stages of L2 learning. If so, then translanguaging in the form of deliberately showing similarities across languages to facilitate transfer (e.g., showing French immersion students that the French word diviser 'to divide' has the same etymological origin as divide) might be particularly successful in supporting learning. ...
... Language choice can be an indicator of expression of identity (Norton & Da Costa, 2018). It is therefore possible that translanguaging could acknowledge students' language identity/identities, thereby supporting their learning of content information (Poza, 2018). If so, then translanguaging to teach key jargon terms in a particular subject area could be key to supporting children's feeling that they had the right to learn that material (Poza, 2018). ...
... It is therefore possible that translanguaging could acknowledge students' language identity/identities, thereby supporting their learning of content information (Poza, 2018). If so, then translanguaging to teach key jargon terms in a particular subject area could be key to supporting children's feeling that they had the right to learn that material (Poza, 2018). However, it would be important to know whether this is a goal that could only be achieved by translanguaging. ...
... Therefore, when teachers enact moves that promote students' use of translanguaging, they are both recognizing and promoting a different and more expansive way of "behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking and, often, reading and writing" (Gee, 2015, p. 2). While research on translanguaging has expanded in teacher education, in elementary sciences, its focus has been on students' sensemaking (Harman et al., 2020;Karlsson et al., 2019;Licona & Kelly, 2020;Poza, 2018), which has supported the field in developing more holistic notions of "communication repertoires" (Rymes, 2014) encompassing a broad set of teachers' and students' semiotic resources (Kress, 2010). Yet, few studies consider the multilingual semiotic resources of the teachers-in this case, BIPOC TCs-and how those resources might support student and teacher identity development through the enactment of linguistically just practices in science. ...
... Elementary science is a field where teachers are faced with the opportunity and also the challenge of teaching both science and literacy (Lemmi et al., 2022) and where pedagogical justice-oriented practices toward language, like translanguaging, represent an "expansive" view on language (Gonz alez-Howard et al., 2023), one that considers multilingual students' linguistic, cultural, and semiotic resources for sensemaking (Li, 2018). As a theory of language and practice in science, translanguaging has demonstrated significant academic benefits for bi/multilingual students' learning and conceptual understandings (Gonz alez-Howard & McNeill, 2016;Harman et al., 2020;Poza, 2018;Su arez, 2020) and participation (Pierson et al., 2021). As part of a literacy framework, translanguaging can also support multilinguals' confidence in literacy practices and foster critical metalinguistic awareness (García & Kleifgen, 2020). ...
... Furthermore, the three BIPOC TC's newly leveraged identities as multilingual scientists supported them to act on their critical awareness and disrupt dual language practices like language separation and monolingual discourses in elementary science with multilingual students (Poza, 2018). Specifically, the TCs intersecting identities allowed them a "breakthrough" (Martel, 2015) in student-centered and teacher-student identity-affirming teaching and linguistic practices that were beneficial for themselves and their students. ...
Understanding how racially and linguistically just teacher education programs (TEPs) support the identity(ies) and translanguaging stances taken up by bilingual Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teacher candidates (TCs) in their professional lives is important both for their development as teachers and for teacher preparation more broadly. Drawing on assignments, classroom observations, interviews , and data from professional learning community (PLC) meetings for three BIPOC dual language bilingual education TCs, this qualitative case study sheds light on translanguaging stance development and the intersecting identities that emerge for these TCs as they learn to teach through the theoretical lenses of trans-languaging and raciolinguicized subjectivity. Findings show how the TEP learning contexts supported the development of bilingual BIPOC TCs' translanguaging stances as a critical part of their professional identities as linguistically justice-oriented science teachers. We argue that their translanguaging stance is a new way of being multilingual and is central to building an
... Recent studies in science and engineering education have shown that the use of translanguaging pedagogy can effectively support multilingual students in engaging with scientific practices and sensemaking of complex phenomena through diverse forms of disciplinary argumentation, modeling, and evidence-based explanations (Infante & Licona, 2018;Lemmi & Pérez, 2024;Licona & Kelly, 2022;Pierson et al., 2021;Poza, 2018;Su arez, 2020Su arez, , 2022. By challenging monolingual norms and promoting linguistic flexibility and fluidity, translanguaging practices support students in accessing scientific discourse more naturally and effectively (Charamba, 2020;Fine, 2022;Karlsson et al., 2020;Menken & S anchez, 2019;Probyn, 2019). ...
... While existing studies delve into translanguaging pedagogies (Creese & Blackledge, 2010;Martínez et al., 2018;Sayer, 2013) and their role in supporting science learning and teaching (Charamba, 2020;Fine, 2022;Karlsson et al., 2020;Poza, 2018), they predominantly focus on overarching philosophies or specific instructional strategies that highlight the youths' communicative repertoires. Considerably less research explores how monolingual teachers who take up translanguaging as a stance translate this orientation into the pedagogies and shifts they make during their moment-to-moment teaching (García et al., 2017). ...
... Considerably less research explores how monolingual teachers who take up translanguaging as a stance translate this orientation into the pedagogies and shifts they make during their moment-to-moment teaching (García et al., 2017). Only a slim body of work examines the ways in which translanguaging becomes part of a broader repertoire of science teaching and learning practices with racialized youth (i.e., Cioè-Peña & Snell, 2015;Poza, 2018), and even fewer do so at the microlevel (i.e., Su arez, 2020). ...
Multilingual youth, from nondominant communities, are often denied critical opportunities for engagement in robust sensemaking due to deficit‐based perspectives and linguistic hierarchies. To advance equity, it is important to recognize all youth as epistemic agents and facilitate opportunities to take on intellectual positions. Drawing on translanguaging theory and critical sociocultural learning perspectives, we examine how a monolingual science teacher employed translanguaging as a dignity‐affirming stance, pedagogical practice, and disciplinary tool, providing multilingual girls with intellectual positions to engage in robust sensemaking. Using video‐interactional analysis, we explore a case of sophisticated sensemaking orchestrated by the teacher's discursive and embodied moves, following the girls' translanguaging practices and disciplinary ideas. Our findings demonstrate how a teacher's translanguaging stance, enacted as a pedagogical practice and disciplinary tool, supported him in developing interpretive power, revealing the multilingual girls' social, cognitive, and communicative brilliances.
... Therefore, when teachers enact moves that promote students' use of translanguaging, they are both recognizing and promoting a different and more expansive way of "behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking and, often, reading and writing" (Gee, 2015, p. 2). While research on translanguaging has expanded in teacher education, in elementary sciences, its focus has been on students' sensemaking (Harman et al., 2020;Karlsson et al., 2019;Licona & Kelly, 2020;Poza, 2018), which has supported the field in developing more holistic notions of "communication repertoires" (Rymes, 2014) encompassing a broad set of teachers' and students' semiotic resources (Kress, 2010). Yet, few studies consider the multilingual semiotic resources of the teachers-in this case, BIPOC TCs-and how those resources might support student and teacher identity development through the enactment of linguistically just practices in science. ...
... Elementary science is a field where teachers are faced with the opportunity and also the challenge of teaching both science and literacy (Lemmi et al., 2022) and where pedagogical justice-oriented practices toward language, like translanguaging, represent an "expansive" view on language (Gonz alez-Howard et al., 2023), one that considers multilingual students' linguistic, cultural, and semiotic resources for sensemaking (Li, 2018). As a theory of language and practice in science, translanguaging has demonstrated significant academic benefits for bi/multilingual students' learning and conceptual understandings (Gonz alez-Howard & McNeill, 2016;Harman et al., 2020;Poza, 2018;Su arez, 2020) and participation (Pierson et al., 2021). As part of a literacy framework, translanguaging can also support multilinguals' confidence in literacy practices and foster critical metalinguistic awareness (García & Kleifgen, 2020). ...
... Furthermore, the three BIPOC TC's newly leveraged identities as multilingual scientists supported them to act on their critical awareness and disrupt dual language practices like language separation and monolingual discourses in elementary science with multilingual students (Poza, 2018). Specifically, the TCs intersecting identities allowed them a "breakthrough" (Martel, 2015) in student-centered and teacher-student identity-affirming teaching and linguistic practices that were beneficial for themselves and their students. ...
Understanding how racially and linguistically just teacher education programs (TEPs) support the identity(ies) and translanguaging stances taken up by bilingual Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teacher candidates (TCs) in their professional lives is important both for their development as teachers and for teacher preparation more broadly. Drawing on assignments, classroom observations, interviews, and data from professional learning community (PLC) meetings for three BIPOC dual language bilingual education TCs, this qualitative case study sheds light on translanguaging stance development and the intersecting identities that emerge for these TCs as they learn to teach through the theoretical lenses of translanguaging and raciolinguicized subjectivity. Findings show how the TEP learning contexts supported the development of bilingual BIPOC TCs' translanguaging stances as a critical part of their professional identities as linguistically justice‐oriented science teachers. We argue that their translanguaging stance is a new way of being multilingual and is central to building an elementary science classroom culture with and for multilingual students. This study underscores how bilingual BIPOC TCs' prior knowledge and identities can be leveraged in teacher education and K‐12 classrooms to develop their translanguaging selves. It also supports robust pedagogical preparation and linguistic justice through multilingual transpositioning of science identities.
... Translanguaging, which denotes "both the complex and fluid language practices of bilinguals, as well as the pedagogical approaches that leverage those practices" (García & Lin, 2016, p. 1), serves as a liberating and transformative ideology and pedagogy that challenges deficit and monoglossic language ideologies, viewing language as a social practice replete with meaning and agency (García & Wei, 2014;Poza, 2017). As a hybrid social space, translanguaging brings together different dimensions of multilingual learners' histories, experiences, ideologies, and cognitive capacity (Wei, 2011), and positions them as creative and critical learners who generate novel and warranted representations and understandings of science concepts (Poza, 2018). Translanguaging is therefore particularly relevant to science education due to its significant pedagogical and identity-affirming functions (Lin & He, 2017;Salloum, 2021;Su arez, 2020). ...
... A culturally and linguistically responsive mediating and affirming space is created, which counters discourses solely authorizing conventions of separate named languages (García, 2019) or rigid fact-oriented, authoritarian, and alienating views of science (Adler & Karam, 2024;Emdin, 2009). With a translanguaging pedagogy, teachers understand the linguistic resources multilingual learners bring and seek to creatively and critically leverage these for promoting science learning and general and disciplinary literacy (Gonz alez-Howard et al., 2017;Lyon, 2022;Poza, 2018;Salloum, 2021). García (2019) suggests three components that promote a translanguaging pedagogy: stance, design, and shifts. ...
... Pedagogically, the hybrid third space created through responsive design and shifts entailed key features that support asset-oriented equitable science education. These features include: (a) engaging learners in dialogic interactions around phenomena that deploy their linguistic resources both fluidly and strategically (Lyon, 2022;Poza, 2018); (b) involving them in disciplinary practices to construct knowledge (Buxton & Lee, 2023;Su arez, 2020), (c) purposefully bringing in and valuing learners' linguistic and cultural repertoires as "gifts" that broaden conventional and canonical perspectives of science learning and discourse (García et al., 2021), and (d) building on multiple modalities and communicative resources for meaning-making (Lin et al., 2020;Su arez & Otero, 2023). Moreover, with dialogic, strategic, and purposeful translanguaging (Salloum, 2021), the teacher and her students found safe hybrid spaces to collaboratively take linguistic risks with little fear of marginalization and humiliation and to affirm their identities as Arab speakers (Moore & Schleppegrell, 2020). ...
The purpose of this study was to explore translanguaging space as a transformative third space, where alternative and competing discourses are celebrated and where science learning and the development of science's discourse and epistemic practices expand across overlapping boundaries (e.g., home, school, and community). The study focused on Syrian refugee youth adapting to learning science in English in the Lebanese multilingual educational system that esteems international languages (English or French) over Arabic. Our research questions included: (1) What translanguaging practices and functions emerge during a linguistically responsive life science unit designed for refugee multilingual learners? (2) How does a translanguaging space act as a third space for refugee learners to engage in meaning‐making and science practices and discourse around the topic of “respiration”? The study utilized a qualitative instrumental case‐study approach to generate data around refugee learners' languaging practices and their development of science understandings, practices, and discourse. We also engaged in participatory methodologies that challenge boundaries between researchers and participants. The data sources were 22 Zoom recordings, students' work, and participant‐generated feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyze transcripts and students' work while adhering to trustworthiness criteria. Our findings center translanguaging as a justice‐oriented pedagogy that enables a productive and “inviting” third space for refugee multilingual learners to make meaning of phenomena by bringing together and extending their semiotic and epistemic repertoires. Serving multi‐tiered functions, translanguaging fostered dialogic connections that affirmed students' “outside” social spaces as valuable resources for meaning‐making in science classrooms. The implications discuss design features that support a fluid and purposeful translanguaging third space for asset‐oriented science learning.
... Five studies focused primarily on increasing opportunity and access to learn disciplinary content, including concepts, ideas, and principles of science (Esquinca et al., 2014;Kim, 2021;Langman, 2014;Navarro Martell, 2022;Poza, 2018). For example, learners leveraged translanguaging to develop understanding of canonical topics across multiple science disciplines, including forms of energy (Esquinca et al., 2014), states of matter (Kim, 2021), inheritance of traits (Langman, 2014), synthetic materials (Navarro Martell, 2022), and the periodic table of elements (Poza, 2018). ...
... Five studies focused primarily on increasing opportunity and access to learn disciplinary content, including concepts, ideas, and principles of science (Esquinca et al., 2014;Kim, 2021;Langman, 2014;Navarro Martell, 2022;Poza, 2018). For example, learners leveraged translanguaging to develop understanding of canonical topics across multiple science disciplines, including forms of energy (Esquinca et al., 2014), states of matter (Kim, 2021), inheritance of traits (Langman, 2014), synthetic materials (Navarro Martell, 2022), and the periodic table of elements (Poza, 2018). A key finding across these studies was that inviting and encouraging translanguaging provided opportunities to "socialize [learners] into target linguistic forms" (Poza, 2018, p. 15), especially scientific vocabulary, and "model the language and thought processes of the discipline" (Esquinca et al., 2014, p. 167). ...
... This emphasis on access may, in part, reflect political and institutional pressures in US K-12 education that narrow the goals of science and engineering learning. For example, Poza (2018) underscored the importance of access to target linguistic forms associated with the language of science "insofar as these seem inexorable measures of achievement and learning in the current accountability landscape of U.S schools" (p. 3). ...
Research on translanguaging in science and engineering education has grown rapidly. Studies carried out across diverse contexts converge in their commitment to fostering equity in science and engineering learning for linguistically marginalized learners. However, the rapid growth of this research area has exposed different approaches to conceptualizing “equity” itself. The purpose of this review of literature was to examine what equity approaches have undergirded research on translanguaging in US K–12 science and engineering education and whether these approaches vary over time and across contexts. We systematically analyzed studies (N = 15) using the four equity approaches articulated in a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Findings of our review indicate that, while studies aimed at increasing opportunity and access to high‐quality science and engineering learning (Approach 1) and, to a lesser extent, identification and representation with science and engineering (Approach 2) were the two most prevalent equity approaches, studies focused on expanding what constitutes science and engineering (Approach 3) and seeing science and engineering as part of justice movements (Approach 4) were somewhat less common. Furthermore, justice‐oriented approaches to equity (Approaches 3 and 4) were increasingly visible in the literature since 2020 as well as in research carried out in nontraditional educational contexts (e.g., out‐of‐school programs, classes outside of the core school subjects). Based on these findings, we propose the need for future research that (a) explicitly conceptualizes and operationalizes constructs related to equity (e.g., what is meant by “achievement” and how it is measured), (b) examines the possibilities and tensions associated with expanding what constitutes science and engineering in traditional educational contexts, (c) leverages the affordances of multiple STEM subjects for addressing justice issues impacting linguistically marginalized communities, and (d) iterates on the equity approaches themselves.
... The first study presented in this section is by Poza (2018). Based on the theoretical framework of translanguaging (e.g., García & Li, 2014), Poza attempts to determine how bilingual students' language practices often cross the boundaries in productive ways regarding the acquisition of academic content and academic skills. ...
... In this review, we have centered on four investigations that were undertaken in different educational levels and countries. Poza (2018) describes the application of translanguaging practices in an immersion bilingual program in the USA. The study indicates that translanguaging was instrumental in supporting the development of students' academic skills and the use of familiar communicative strategies. ...
... Research on translanguaging has moved beyond its pedagogical applicability in education; it is a much more complex phenomenon that is increasingly gaining momentum. As shown here, research on translanguaging has centered, for example, on its pedagogical effectiveness to promote promoting students' native identity (e.g., Sayer, 2013), social justice (e.g., Dávila & Bunar, 2020), and enriching students' learning opportunities (e.g., Poza, 2018). ...
... For example, Pratt and Ernst-Slavit's study (2019) documented how students used spontaneous translanguaging to exercise their agency and negotiate power imbalance between the Spanish and English in the classroom. L. E. Poza (2018) also reported teaching practices that challenged the language boundaries and encouraged students to bring their funds of knowledge into science-related literacy tasks without fear of humiliation and marginalization. ...
... Ten studies on translanguaging highlighted diverse learners' dynamic employment of multimodal repertoires (i.e. Esquinca et al., 2014;Garcia, 2020;E. Garza & Arreguín-Anderson, 2018;Kwon, 2022;Pierson et al., 2021;L. E. Poza, 2018;Ünsal et al., 2017;M. Williams, 2022;Zheng, 2021). For example, Garcia (2020) illustrated how a prereader was encouraged to read with and take pride in his available repertoires (e.g. hand movements, sounds, and body movements). Students in Pierson et al. (2021) STEM class moved between Spanish and English and nonlinguistic modes. They a ...
... Children's and parents' use of multimodal materials also enhanced parent-child interactions during translanguaging. In L. E. Poza's (2018) study, the teacher participant encouraged students' use of sounds, music, and images in their PowerPoint book reports. Students also alternated their use of Spanish and English in verbal and written texts and interacted with linguistic texts and visual/digital imagery. ...
... Turning our attention to several studies that have investigated translanguaging practices (TP) in peers' interactions, Cenoz points to interaction as spontaneous translanguaging which"refers to fluid discursive practices that can take place inside and outside the classroom" (Cenoz, 2017, p. 194). Moreover, TP have been investigated within different skills, such as reading (Cano & Ruiz, 2020;Maseko & Mkhize, 2019;Noguerón-Liu, 2020), listening (Baker & Hope, 2019), reading and writing (Plakans et al., n.d.;Wang, 2019), reading and oral production , writing (Barbour & Lickorish Quinn, 2020;Orcasitas-Vicandi, 2019), oral (Cohen et al., 2021;Lee & García, 2020;Martin-Beltrán et al., 2019;Poza, 2018), and writing and oral production (Axelrod & Cole, 2018;Coady et al., 2019;Hidalgo & Lázaro-Ibarrola, 2020). Following our primary interest, which is in research focused on analyzing oral translanguaging practices, we now present some recent studies. ...
... The data from 150 hours of audio-recorded interactions among students and between students and teachers over a full academic year was transcribed and analyzed into three categories. Poza (2018) categorized the results according to translanguaging and communicative function and storytelling, and the results showed that translanguaging served several functions in students' social and identity profiles, as well as it showed itself as an "effective resource in communication, forging alliances, excluding and distancing others, and narrating real or fictitious events" (Poza, 2018, p. 15). ...
... Therefore, considering the calling for further inquiry into the role of translanguaging in formal bilingual education by Poza (2018), Martin-Beltrán and colleagues (2018), and Cohen, Bauer, and Minniear (2021), among others, this study attempted to complement and contribute with the findings on translanguaging in oral interaction context. It aims at exploring how students' translanguaging practices are manifested, and for what purposes students translanguage. ...
Drawing on Translanguaging theory, which views language as a holistic
repertoire, this study examines how students’ translanguaging practices
(TP) are manifested and for what purposes. The participants were seven
fifth-grade peers in a bilingual school in Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese -
English). Their TP were recorded during an oral task based on a wordless,
short video stimulus. The data were qualitatively analyzed and coded.
Results indicate that TP occurred spontaneously and for specific purposes.
The most frequent TP use included gestures, task management, meaning
negotiation, lexical creativity, syntactic translanguaging, peer correction,
and form negotiation. Findings suggest that translanguaging pedagogy
is valuable in bilingual contexts where minority languages are developed
because it enables students to communicate freely and critically in a fluid
and dynamic environment.
... Masalah familiaritas terhadap istilah tidak hanya diterapkan dalam bidang Biologi, tetapi juga dalam bidang sains secara umum. Selain karena penerjemahan istilah ke bahasa dan konteks lokal, kondisi ini juga disebabkan oleh karakteristik dasar dari sains, yaitu sains bergantung pada sebuah konvensi, istilah, dan norma diskursif tertentu dalam penyelidikan dan diskusi sains (Poza, 2016). Sejalan dengan karakteristik dasar dari pengetahuan ilmiah atau sains yang terbagi menjadi pengetahun faktual (fakta dan konsep), prosedural (metode ilmiah), dan subjektif (familiaritas seseorang terhadap sains) (Chang et al., 2018). ...
... Tidak hanya bagi siswa, informasi mengenai familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah ilmiah juga penting bagi pengajar. Pengajar dapat menyesuaikan penggunaan istilah atau bahasa secara umum dalam melaksanakan pembelajaran di kelas (Poza, 2016). Pengajar juga dapat mengenalkan istilah secara bertahap sesuai dengan kondisi familiaritas siswa sebelum pembelajaran. ...
... Pengajar juga dapat fokus pada bagaimana mengucapkan istilah sambil memikirkan makna dari istilah tersebut (Ehri, 2020). Pendekatan translanguasi (akuisisi bahasa dibingkai dalam proses pemaknaan secara sosial dan bentuk standar) untuk mengembangkan kesadaran terhadap istilah (Poza, 2016). ...
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah sains dan biologi. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kuantitatif deskriptif dan komparatif yang dilaksanakan di SMA Negeri 6 Kerinci. Pengumpulan mengumpulkan data terkait familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah ilmiah. Sampel penelitian 123 siswa. Data dikumpulkan menggunakan kuesioner yang terdiri dari 60 butir istilah. Data diolah dan dianalisis secara deskriptif untuk memperoleh gambaran umum mengenai familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah ilmiah. Kemudian menggunakan independent samples t-test untuk membandingkan familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah pada tingkatan kelas yang berbeda dan paired sample t-test untuk membandingkan tingkat familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah sains umum dan biologi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan, terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan antara familiritas terhadap istilah sains umum dan biologi untuk siswa dengan tingkatan kelas yang berbeda. Menariknya, siswa kelas XI MIPA (2.58) lebih familiar dengan istilah sains umum dan biologi dibandingkan siswa kelas XII MIPA (2.06). Perbedaan yang signifikan juga ditemukan antara familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah sains umum dan biologi. Siswa SMA Negeri 6 Kerinci cenderung lebih familiar dengan istilah biologi (2.44) dibandingkan dengan istilah sains umum (2.05). Simpulan, a) tingkat familiaritas ditemukan tidak sejalan dengan tingkatan kelas; b) terdapat korelasi yang tinggi dan signifikan antara familiaritas istilah sains umum dan biologi siswa; c) terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan antara familiaritas siswa terhadap istilah sains umum dan biologi.
This research aims to determine students' familiarity with science and biology terms. This research uses descriptive and comparative quantitative methods which were carried out at SMA Negeri 6 Kerinci. Collection collects data related to students' familiarity with scientific terms. The research sample was 123 students. Data was collected using a questionnaire consisting of 60 terms. The data is processed and analyzed descriptively to obtain a general picture of students' familiarity with scientific terms. Then use the independent samples t-test to compare students' familiarity with terms at different grade levels and the paired sample t-test to compare the level of students' familiarity with general science and biology terms. The research results show that there is a significant difference between the familiarity of general science and biology terms for students at different grade levels. Interestingly, class XI MIPA students (2.58) are more familiar with general science and biology terms than class XII MIPA students (2.06). Significant differences were also found between students' familiarity with general science and biology terms. Students at SMA Negeri 6 Kerinci tend to be
... Through translanguaging as a linguistically sensitive approach, students can build their conceptual understanding of science education, relating it to linguistic practices outside the classroom (Infante & Licona, 2018). Poza (2018) explores classroom activities such as oral presentations, vernacular language use in writing, discussions, and debates on word choice in both Spanish and English in the science classroom and lists the practical use of translanguaging for achieving academic skills like understanding complex texts with visual aids, learning technical vocabulary, and categorizing objects with similar characteristics. ...
... Next, the teachers used words from other languages to simplify, translate or give examples of the complex terminologies of the subject in the students' home languages, as they perceived that it helped the students to understand them easily. This aligns with the findings of Charamba (2022), Infante and Licona (2018), Kääntä et al. (2018), Lu and So (2023), Pun and Tai (2021), Poza (2018) and Tai (2022). The above-mentioned studies identify that the practice of translating scientific and mathematical terms into the home language of the students helped them build scientific knowledge and encouraged participation in scientific discourses in the classroom. ...
... In transitional bilingual courses, students are expected to master normative scientific practices without expanding on their own linguistic practices. This reinscribes hegemony through an emphasis on English only (Jensen & Thompson, 2020;Poza, 2018). In contrast pedagogías entrenzadas encourage students to draw on a holistic repertoire of linguistic, cultural, and academic resources in making sense of contextualized phenomena (Su arez, 2020). ...
... Students were able to use their own languages and linguistic practices on assignments and readings, including the writing done in class. However, there were always boundaries to the lessons, and neither the science nor the language learning was oversimplified (Poza, 2018). Let us be clear-this is not an "anything goes approach"-curricula and pedagogy structured students' engagement in purposeful ways to affirm and grow their repertoires in terms of scientific and linguistic practices. ...
Recent reforms in science education shift the focus of instruction to supporting students' sensemaking about phenomena. At the same time, discussions of equity in science education have become more common and more contested. For emergent bilingual (EB) learners, there is growing consensus that these trends together imply valuing diverse linguistic and cultural resources that students draw upon to make sense of the world. However, asset‐based pedagogies often do not attend to the role of oppression and the co‐construction of linguistic and racial marginalization. Furthermore, culturally responsive pedagogies push beyond valuing student assets to challenge the end goals of education, emphasizing the development of critical consciousness. Through this case study of one thematic unit within a transitional bilingual physical science class, this study puts forth pedagogías entrenzadas as a purposeful braiding of asset and critical pedagogies that attend to science, language, and cultural responsiveness. The study took place in a Title I school in the suburbs of a large midwestern city where the majority of students are from Latin American immigrant families. Pedagogías entrenzadas are articulated through the analysis of classroom episodes that attended to language, science, and cultural responsiveness in combination. By attending to these three facets in braided ways, the teacher created ruptures in systems that structurally exclude EB students. We present three classroom episodes in conjunction with additional evidence from a larger data set to demonstrate the ways pedagogías entrenzadas created spaces where (1) generative themes and words created opportunities for holistic sensemaking; (2) there were opportunities to consider and critique language and science; and (3) heterogeneity in linguistic, cultural, and academic resources was upheld and valued. The implications of this pedagogical work extended outside of the classroom, where the teacher successfully advocated with colleagues for the creation of an asset‐based bilingual science program.
... This is due to the effectiveness of translanguaging in dealing with language-related challenges in content comprehension, thus reducing students' negative emotions such as helplessness and embarrassment (Llanes & Cots, 2022) and allowing for their better understanding of complex ideas and concepts (Nikula & Moore, 2019). Translanguaging also contributes to developing students' metalinguistic awareness (Hopewell & Abril-Gonzalez, 2019) and thus improves students' language learning (Poza, 2018), developing bilingual vocabulary (Gallagher & Colohan, 2017). ...
... A translinguagem, com base em Carroll e Combs (2016), é uma estratégia de incentivo ao desenvolvimento de habilidades linguísticas a partir da correlação entre as línguas, eliminando a necessidade de segregação entre elas. A proporção da translinguagem alcançaria o ponto de descortinar questões como as lutas de classe (Poza, 2018) e promover a diversidade dos e entre estudantes, freando a hegemonia de ideologias de línguas majoritárias -como o inglês (Willey;Morales, 2021). ...
Com o intuito de analisar a Educação Básica no Brasil, investigam-se os limites e possibilidades da Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) (Brasil, 2017) a respeito da variação de repertórios linguísticos. Esta pesquisa documental e bibliográfica aponta para avanços na tentativa de eliminar o termo EFL ( English as a Foreign Language , ou Inglês como Língua Estrangeira), o qual remete à ideia de um falante nativo como detentor da língua. No entanto, a substituição de EFL por e ELF ( English as a Lingua Franca, ou Inglês como Língua Franca) resulta em uma supervalorização da língua que acaba por marginalizar outras. Espera-se que versões futuras da BNCC considerem a heterogeneidade linguística e, se por ora o currículo não reflete tal tendência, aposta-se na articulação de práticas pedagógicas que respondam a essas expectativas.
... Our analysis engages boundary-breaking perspectives that shape and reflect a form of decolonial pedagogical praxis or transformative pedagogy which moves beyond traditional instructional practices involving BMLs in STEM. We draw from three interrelated trans-perspectives (translanguaging, transdisciplinarity, and transculturation) because they offer a productive multidimensional lens for supporting, examining, and transforming dominant epistemologies linked to teacher learning within bilingual/multilingual STEM contexts (Canagarajah, 2022;del Carmen Salazar, 2013;Franquiz & del Carmen Salazar, 2004;Martin-Beltrán, 2014;Poza, 2018;Solís et al., 2024). The analysis builds on cultural and linguistic theories that advance cultural and linguistic fluidity, critical consciousness, innovation, and hybridity in the context of bilingual/multilingual teacher education and professional development. ...
This study presents findings from a professional development project that engaged secondary school in-service STEM teachers in transformative perspectives to make sense of theory, practice, and action in multilingual STEM classrooms. In particular, we examine how teachers engaged with translanguaging, transdisciplinarity, and transculturation in critical reflections and course discussions to promote critical consciousness. Findings reveal that trans- perspectives were interconnected and integral in promoting criticality and equity-minded STEM teaching in bilingual contexts. Teachers historicized personal experiences through translanguaged narratives; connected and integrated STEM language and content knowledge through transdisciplinary practices; and grappled with the role of culture in STEM learning through transcultural repositioning.
... A review of research indicates that translanguaging has the potential to serve as a culturally responsive and social justice pedagogy (García-Mateus & Palmer, 2017) and scaffold the development of reading and writing skills (Axelrod & Cole, 2018). Translanguaging also allows access to students' full communicative repertoires (Kirsch, 2018), supports the development of multilingual language awareness (Bauer et al., 2017), provides social semiotic sense-making (Poza, 2018), and supports student authoring of agentive identities (Sayer, 2013). ...
As the United States becomes increasing diverse, it is incumbent upon teachers and teacher educators to continually strive to develop more equitable and socially-just pedagogies and practices. Framed through the lens of translanguaging, this multiple case study examined the burgeoning development of equity-based practices and mindsets of eight in-service early childhood and elementary teachers in the Midwest over three teaching-coaching cycles. Analysis focused on materials (e.g., original and revised lesson plans, teaching videos, lesson materials, and peer dialogues and reflections on lesson preparation , activities, and assessments), collected over three coaching cycles, final reflection papers, and focus group interviews. Preparation, teaching, and reflection videos, as well as interviews, were transcribed and coded across three phases of analysis. Findings indicated that teacher transformations occurred as teachers interrogated moments of tension in lesson planning and implementation dialogically with their peers across the cycles and that virtual communal spaces served as communities of practice.
... This expansive view of equity means allowing students to use diverse expressions and representations of ideas that transcend socially and politically constructed Eurocentric norms. In other words, students are encouraged to use their full multimodal and linguistic repertoires in science learning (Pierson et al. 2023b;Poza 2016;Siry and Gorges 2020;Suárez and Otero 2024). ...
Recent research has focused on innovative instructional shifts that aim to expand what constitutes science and engineering practices, exploring also how they can build on students' diverse language resources in science learning. However, few studies explore the intersections of elementary teacher preparation and the implementation of science and engineering practices through expansive and asset‐based approaches to language use. Through a qualitative case study conducted within a science methods course at a research university in the southeastern part of the United States, elementary preservice science teachers were positioned as agentive learners, engaging in modeling practices while leveraging their diverse language resources. Using multimodal interaction analysis (MIA), our study examined the meaning‐making processes of elementary preservice science teachers in the practice of modeling. Findings revealed three themes related to how the preservice science teachers engaged with diverse semiotic resources: (1) their use of physical manipulatives and other multimodal resources to develop meanings during the initial stages of model development, where they experimented with different ways to represent their understanding; (2) their ongoing reliance on multimodal and linguistic resources for refining and solidifying meanings as the model became more complex and comprehensive throughout the modeling process; and (3) their use of these meanings to interpret and engage with science texts. Implications include the importance of providing elementary preservice science teachers with professional learning opportunities that align with the envisioned science learning experiences of their future students, thus fostering equitable science teaching and learning with models and modeling.
... Fourth and last, 17 studies (40%) were not listed in Table 4 due to not clearly focusing on a particular SEP or due to the lack of evidence for claimed SPEs. In general, these studies fell roughly into five categories: (a) Studies that focused on meaning-making through the translation of scientific terms between named languages (e.g., Karlsson et al., 2019;Lin & He, 2017;Lu & So, 2023;Salloum & Boujaoude, 2020;Ünsal et al., 2018a), (b) studies that focused on meaning-making by selecting a handful of excerpts of classroom interactions during which teachers ask questions and students respond or students talk among each other (e.g., Du, 2022;Garza & Arreguín-Anderson, 2018;Poza, 2018), (c) studies that focused on classroom discourse, whether dialogical or didactical, with teacher-student exchanges aimed to help students with sense-making (e.g., Amin & Badreddine, 2020;Esquinca et al., 2014;Lin & Lo, 2017), (d) studies that employed an experimental design centering on the performance of students on a posttest as a measure of the impact of a translanguaging intervention (e.g., Charamba, 2020a;Charamba & Zano, 2019), and finally (e) studies that focused on the role translanguaging plays in cultivating a social and emotional classroom ambiance to assure students that they belong to the classroom and that their science learning, as well as feelings, are important (e.g., Qin & Beauchemin, 2022). ...
Recently, there has been a surge of literature on the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy and practices in science education settings. By activating and validating learners' full communicative repertoire, translanguaging holds promise to build an inclusive science learning community where multilingual learners' ways of knowing are not only respected but celebrated and extended. Drawing from the dual synergy between translanguaging and science education on multimodalities and social justice agenda, this systematic review synthesized the key features of empirical research published from 2010 to 2023 that reported translanguaging practices in global K‐12 formal and informal science education settings. The results indicated high heterogeneity in the studied socio‐geographic landscapes and in the definition, implementation, and implication of translanguaging practices. Analysis of the science sense‐making practices indicates some epistemic practices are more widely represented than others, with marginal global differences observed. To maintain and embolden the synergy between science education and translanguaging, our findings recommend increased collaboration between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics (STEM) education and bilingual education and collaboration between teachers and researchers to develop an effective translanguaging environment for science learning.
... Translanguaging studies in bilingual schooling contexts demonstrate that bilingual teachers and students naturally shift between English and Spanish during instructional moments to keep sensemaking at the center of classroom science activities-even when the language policy requires strict separation of languages (Esquinca et al., 2014;Garza & Arreguín-Anderson, 2018;Poza, 2018). Along with other science education scholars, we are interested in how sensemaking works as a social, discursive process where members of a group work together to develop mutual understandings of a science phenomenon by jointly engaging in science practices (e.g., Benedict-Chambers et al., 2017;Odden & Russ, 2019;Schwarz et al., 2021). ...
Science classroom assessment often requires multilingual learners to demonstrate ideas using only English‐language resources. These assessments can provide an incomplete picture of students' knowledge and limit subsequent learning opportunities. Increasingly, science teachers are incorporating translanguaging pedagogies in their instructional practices. Less is known about students' perspectives of translanguaging in science. In this manuscript, we employ equity‐as‐access and equity‐as‐transformation lenses to investigate multilingual learners' perspectives about translanguaging as a formative assessment practice. Data came from a larger participatory co‐design design study in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school in the Mountain West. We qualitatively analyzed 8 focus group interview transcripts with 13 sixth‐grade students from across 4 formative assessment cycles. Analysis was both inductive and deductive. Findings suggest that sixth graders have savvy, nuanced views about translanguaging that bridge equity‐as‐access and equity‐as‐transformation lenses. They saw translanguaging as both supporting their English language development and as an important practice to allow them to focus bilingually on their science ideas without translating everything into English. Additionally, they highlighted tensions associated with welcoming translanguaging in schools with de facto English‐only languaging norms. This study has implications for teachers, assessment designers, and researchers. Findings signal structural/policy changes needed to authentically center translanguaging as an equity‐oriented practice across science assessment systems.
... Moreover, it also allows us to disrupt power hierarchies deeply woven into the fabrics of learning environments that result in certain individuals' language(s) and languaging being viewed and treated as more productive and appropriate than others. In STEM classrooms, where the assumption of disciplinary language and technical vocabulary prevails, minoritized students' practices are often othered as they frequently receive the implicit or explicit message that their translanguaging is a stepping stone toward more "sophisticated" and "legitimate" ways of communicating, demonstrating understanding and competence (Gonz alez-Howard, Poza, 2018). ...
... For other MLs, this may mean exploring the nonformal language supports provided by general education teachers as well as their home and neighborhood contexts. For example, a growing body of research explores how teachers' "translanguaging" practices, instructional practices that allow ELs to leverage their linguistic resources across multiple languages, may hold promise for enhancing outcomes (Pierson et al., 2021;Poza, 2018;Suárez, 2020), whereas other research demonstrates the importance of linguistic composition of neighborhoods for achievement in reading and mathematics (Drake, 2014). ...
Multilingual learners (MLs) represent an increasing proportion of public school students. Although much attention has been given to their academic performance in English language arts and math, less research has addressed their academic performance in science, particularly in elementary school. This study leveraged nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 2010–2011 to document the science test score trajectories of MLs from kindergarten through fifth grade. Using descriptive statistics and regression analyses, our findings document wide variation in elementary science test performance among subgroups of MLs while also documenting the rapid gains this group makes in science performance across the elementary years compared with non-MLs. Our study is among the first to use nationally representative data to examine science learning trajectories of MLs and provides a foundation for policy, practice, and future research aimed at understanding how the linguistic assets of MLs promote science learning.
... Within these contexts, teachers can take a "content-first" approach to learning (Brown and Ryoo 2008), whereby students are encouraged to engage in sensemaking about phenomena and science concepts on their own terms before being taught specific forms of language, such as vocabulary. Teachers can provide opportunities for students to draw from their full range of linguistic resources to express their ideas, including named languages other than English (García et al. 2017;Lee et al. 2022;Lemmi and Pérez 2024;Pierson and Grapin 2021;Poza 2018;Suárez 2020). Furthermore, they can support students in engaging with multiple modalities, including gestures (Grapin 2019), visualizations (Ryoo and Bedell 2019), and conceptual models (Pierson, Clark, and Brady 2021) in their sensemaking. ...
This paper examines a professional learning (PL) program for upper elementary teachers focused on developing instructional practices to support multilingual learners (MLLs) in science. The PL sought to support teachers' praxis, which we describe as their sense of agency to critically analyze and take action against barriers to MLLs’ opportunities to learn. We analyzed pre‐PL interviews with teachers to identify the ways that they framed MLLs from asset‐ and deficit‐based perspectives and the barriers that they identified that undermine MLLs' science learning. Then, we analyzed the extent to which the teachers' participation in the PL shifted their framing of MLLs and fostered their sense of agency to challenge the barriers faced by MLLs. We found that teachers shifted toward more asset‐based views of students' existing language resources and deepened their sense of agency to employ scaffolds that engage these resources in their own instructional practice. However, teachers continued to surface barriers in their organizational contexts, including the emphasis placed on standardized language assessments and the misalignment between English language instruction and science learning. Our analysis shows that the PL did not adequately support teachers in navigating these particular institutional barriers. Based on our analysis, we argue that teachers and science education researchers should expand their focus beyond teachers’ instructional practices and work together to remove barriers for MLLs in the larger organizational systems of schooling.
... Particularly, multilingual learners rely on metacognitive skills as they consider skills they have acquired across languages, applying their cultural knowledge to instructional tasks (Morales & DiNapoli, 2018). Multilinguals must depend on this underlying knowledge across languages when engaging in the complex cognitive processing and strategy use prevalent in the discursive practices of scientific fields as taught within math and science curricula (Domínguez, 2011;Poza, 2015). As a result, a focus on improving math skills, including increasing knowledge in strategy use and critical thinking within the context of science instruction to assist struggling students, may help learners understand science concepts, especially for multilinguals. ...
... Thus, there is value in fostering dynamic and flexible language practices in bilingual communities. Teacher development programs should not only sequence and integrate SMK and DLK but also actively incorporate translanguaging strategies to leverage the full linguistic repertoire of students [80]. This approach would support teachers in utilizing all available modalities and languages to improve comprehension and engagement among ELs. ...
Background: The increasing presence of English learners (ELs) in U.S. schools underscores the need for effective instructional strategies tailored to their diverse needs, especially in STEM subjects. Previous research primarily focused on self-reported teacher knowledge and specific curricular programs, often neglecting the integration of content and language knowledge. The study aimed to evaluate the impact of a professional development (PD) program aligned with a previously reported teacher training knowledge framework aimed at improving bilingual/ESL teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and disciplinary literacy knowledge (DLK). Methods: This study employed a quasi-experimental design involving 30 teachers in three cohorts, each experiencing different levels of subject matter and disciplinary literacy knowledge. The program was assessed over four time points using multiple-choice tests on math and science knowledge and an instructional strategy rubric to evaluate teaching quality. Results: Significant improvements were observed in both content knowledge and instructional quality across all cohorts, with the greatest gains in cohorts that started the PD with a focus on SMK. Teachers’ understanding of disciplinary literacy and its integration with subject matter knowledge significantly enhanced their teaching effectiveness. Conclusions: The findings suggest that structured PD programs that integrate disciplinary literacy with content knowledge effectively enhance teacher professional knowledge and classroom practices. Starting PD with a strong focus on content knowledge prepares teachers to better apply disciplinary literacy strategies, thereby supporting more effective instruction for ELs. Implications: This study highlights the importance of considering the sequence of professional learning and the integration of content and disciplinary literacy strategies in PD programs. Future PD efforts should focus on these elements to maximize the impact on teacher development and student outcomes in bilingual/ESL settings.
... Studies in Turkey, Iraq, South Africa, and Japan, demonstrate a global interest in EMI across diverse educational and language policy contexts. We should note that the USA (Poza 2018;Infante & Licona 2021) and Canada (Crossman 2018;Cammarata & Haley 2018) are each represented by only 2 studies, and the UK (Baker & Hüttner 2017) by only 1 study. Moreover, the single study from the UK was a comparison study with Thailand and Austria. ...
English medium instruction (EMI) is now a well‐established field of education research, yet its distinction from English for academic purposes (EAP) and from English for specific purposes (ESP) remains a subject of debate. This scoping review investigates the overlap and divergences between these fields. As well as using raw data from a previous systematic review of EMI, we identified research questions published in five selected journals between 2017 and 2022: Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Language and Education, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development in order to identify the convergence and divergence in academic interest areas. We additionally examined research settings and participants across these studies. Our findings revealed a spectrum of research questions with largely distinct areas of research interest and considerable differences in research settings. This study contributes to the academic discussion by offering a detailed picture of the current research landscape, and suggests not only a need for collaboration between EMI, and EAP/ESP researchers but also a value in maintaining some distinction between the two fields.
... I try to also make sure I can help out my friends in understanding the teacher too." Despite Sebastian's positioning as someone who has limited language and literacy skills, he resists these problematic perceptions by highlighting his commitment toward collective meaning-making and connecting disciplinary-based concepts to his everyday experiences (Poza, 2018;Sánchez & García, 2021). Thus, he shows the importance of encouraging children to relate different forms of knowledge to their everyday lives, roles, and histories outside of school (España & Herrera, 2020;Orellana & García, 2014). ...
... Firstly, Poza's (2018) study analyzed conversations about stereotypes of Latinx students on 150 hours of audio-recording interactions between students and teachers over a full academic ...
RESUMO Com uma abordagem teórica de translinguagem considerando as línguas não como entidades separadas, mas como um repertório linguístico completo disponível para indivíduos bi/multilíngues, esta revisão sistemática analisou práticas de translinguagem associadas a tarefas orais e escritas em contexto de educação bilíngue, abordando métodos, análises e resultados. Critérios PRISMA para revisões sistemáticas foram adotados em buscas nas bases Pubmed/Medline, Lilacs, Eric, Scopus, PsycINFO e Web of Science para artigos publicados entre 2017-2021. Vinte e quatro artigos foram analisados. As práticas de translinguagem foram investigadas em quatro estudos com foco na produção escrita, em dez estudos sobre produção oral e em dez sobre ambas as práticas. As interações dos alunos estiveram no centro dos debates. Várias abordagens têm sido empregadas na pesquisa de práticas translíngues, indicando um refinamento contínuo dos métodos. A revisão traz implicações para a pesquisa e a pedagogia na educação bilíngue com base em uma perspectiva de línguas integradas no multilinguismo. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Translinguagem. Educação bilíngue. Produção oral. Produção escrita. ABSTRACT Based on a translanguaging theoretical approach considering languages not as separate entities but as an entire linguistic repertoire available to bi/multilingual individuals, this systematic review analyzed studies on TP associated with oral and written tasks in bilingual education, focusing on methods, analyses, and results. This study adopted PRISMA criteria for systematic reviews to search in Pubmed/Medline, Lilacs, Eric, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases for papers published between 2017-2021. Twenty-four papers were analyzed. The results evidenced that translanguaging practices were investigated in four papers focusing on written production, ten on oral production, and ten on both. Students' interactions were at the heart of the debates. Various approaches have been employed in translanguaging practices research, indicating an ongoing refinement of methods. The review portrays implications for bilingual education research and pedagogy based on an integrated language perspective in multilingualism.
The present study argues that though translanguaging is used as a scaffolding tool, an English-medium science high school whose students are potentially gifted employs the said phenomenon to perform communicative functions. Hence, the study observed senior high school science classes to describe the communicative functions where the translanguaging goals and strategies are used by the teachers and students. Results reveal that the teachers predominantly performed two communicative functions, namely managing the classroom and delivering instruction. In turn, the students performed three communicative functions, namely discussing the laboratory procedure, troubleshooting perceived errors, and expressing delight in learning. Both teachers and students performed similar translanguaging strategies, namely translanguaging in speaking and project learning, to fulfill the goals of identity positionality and building background knowledge. Findings suggest that translanguaging in advanced secondary science classes may indicate a high level of engagement in scientific inquiry.
This qualitative study examines how secondary teachers (6th–12th grade) navigated tensions of knowledge and practice while supporting culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in a district with a history of not meeting federal requirements for serving English learners (ELs). Through the U.S. Department of Education's National Professional Development grant program, the teachers completed a master's degree in Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity and a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education (CLDE) endorsement. We use a critical sociocultural perspective to explore teachers' appropriation of knowledge during the first semester‐long graduate course as they grappled with new frameworks of multilingualism and advocacy rather than monolingualism and compliance. Findings illustrate how secondary teachers negotiate tensions that arise as they navigate conflicting district demands for student language and literacy development alongside emergent visions for more culturally and linguistically responsive instruction.
The term “translanguaging” is often mentioned in studies on bilingual education, multilingual education, and second language learning, and has gradually become a hot topic in recent years. The researcher surveyed 34 students and one teacher in a third language learning classroom and found that the vast majority of students had positive attitudes toward the teacher’s translanguaging behaviors in the classroom; teachers are proactive and flexible in using their multilingual resources in the classroom to accomplish instructional goals. This study also summarized and explained two purposes of teacher’s translanguaging behaviors in the classroom: explanatory purposes and managerial purposes. By demonstrating the practice of translanguaging behaviors in language learning classrooms, this study attempts to provide some insights for some educationalists, educational policy makers, and especially teachers in second foreign language learning classrooms, suggesting that they should update their knowledge and conceptions of translanguaging and do not overlook the integral role of translanguaging in the classroom. Future research could be devoted to understanding the application of multilingual translanguaging practices in more foreign language classrooms and the impact of teachers’ classroom translanguaging strategies on students’ foreign language acquisition.
This study delves into the realm of student conceptual change, examining shifting understandings as important steppingstones on the path to sensemaking and canonical understanding in science education. It explores the potential of a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) curriculum, aiming to provide equitable learning opportunities, especially for emerging bilingual (EB) student populations. To achieve this, elementary school educators from randomly assigned schools received professional development training to implement a novel curriculum encompassing both STEM and STEAM (STEM + Arts) approaches to life science instruction. These approaches comprised: (1) an NGSS‐aligned STEM unit employing inquiry‐based science instruction; (2) an NGSS‐aligned STEAM unit utilizing Arts‐based science instruction instead of inquiry methods. The results indicated that a STEAM‐first approach was most beneficial in helping students change from non‐canonical conceptual understanding toward more nuanced canonical science knowledge. Specifically, for EB students, the STEAM‐first approach showed even more promise, signifying its potential to bridge educational disparities. Furthermore, the study revealed that the integration of Arts as an instructional tool to teach science education played a pivotal role in enhancing the overall learning experience among students. Arts integration stimulated motivation, invigorated conceptual understanding, and offered unique avenues for elucidating complex scientific concepts and terminologies. This research contributes valuable insights for improving science education instruction, emphasizing the efficacy of conceptual change toward canonical scientific understanding through patterns of instructional sequencing of effective STEAM integration. It provides educators with evidence‐based strategies to foster inclusive and equitable science learning experiences, ultimately guiding students toward deeper conceptual comprehension.
The aim of this article is to explore how socially and culturally shaped resources for meaning-making are used in a translanguaging science classroom and how these interact to promote multilingual students’ participation and understanding of science. The data consist of video- and audio-recorded science lessons in a Swedish compulsory school (Grades 4–6). The analysis, rooted in translanguaging and sociocultural perspectives on learning, views learning as dialogic processes within social contexts and is framed within social semiotic theory, both regarding systemic functional linguistics and social semiotic perspectives on multimodality. Multimodal interaction analysis is used to clarify the use of semiotic resources by students, the science teacher and the mother-tongue teacher, as well as their various functions in meaning-making processes. Findings show how the participants’ linguistic repertoires contribute to semiotic resources in the dialogic conversations and how each expression provides a unique aspect of the subject content, which together shape a comprehensive whole. By combining and integrating different modalities, such as gestures, drawings, and objects with verbal resources, continuity is fostered in the science activities. However, the study also underlines the importance of verbal language resources for students’ opportunities to develop a broader and deeper knowledge in science subjects.
This systematic review considers what is known about translanguaging in relation to teaching and learning, motivated by the concept's popularity and ongoing critiques about its pedagogical utility and transformative potential. Based on thematic analysis of 111 empirical studies on translanguaging in U.S. PK-12 educational settings, we identified the following themes: (1) translanguaging emerges naturally, and purposefully, in classrooms with bi/multilingual learners, (2) translanguaging facilitates student sense-making in support of learning, (3) translanguaging increases student engagement and opportunities for collaboration, (4) translanguaging supports bi/multilingual students' identity development and sense of belonging, (5) translanguaging can create a counterspace that challenges deficit-framed ideologies and cultivates critical consciousness, (6) learning about translanguaging contributes to teachers developing more asset-oriented stances toward bi/multilingual learners and more linguistically responsive pedagogies, and (7) context plays a central role in if and how translanguaging transforms teaching and learning–translanguaging looks different, and has different impacts, across different contexts. We conclude that we know much about the positive ways translanguaging shapes teaching and learning, while also highlighting some challenges and tensions within the extant literature and the need for increased research that attends to the nuances of context, includes more methodological diversity, and centers decolonial and critical perspectives.
Monografija predstavlja tri zaokrožene entitete, ki so dokaj samostojne in hkrati soodvisne: (1) terminološka vprašanja, povezana z otroško in mladinsko književnostjo: tematologija, književne vrste in oblike bralnih gradiv, kanonizacija, medbesedilnost; (2) vrednotenje otroške in mladinske književnosti, temeljni kriteriji; (3) teorije bralnega razvoja in branja: starost naslovnikov oz. razvitost sposobnosti bralne pismenosti mladega bralca ali bralke; kriterija dolžine besedila in števila različnih besed v besedilu (povezava z gradniki bralne pismenosti). V zadnjih nekaj letih se kažejo bistvene spremembe pri nastajanju, oblikovanju, izdajanju in vrednotenju literarnih del, ki sodijo v otroško in mladinsko književnost. Bralni razvoj otrok, učencev in dijakov preučujejo različne stroke, zato je smiselno, da bi strokovna javnost sodelovala pri oblikovanju kakovostnih bralnih priporočil (za branje na formalni, neformalni in informalni ravni), pri čemer je nujno upoštevanje literarnozgodovinskih, literarnoteoretičnih in literarnorecepcijskih načel.
Given the growing multilingual student population worldwide, many countries/regions have implemented content-based instruction (CBI) programs that include content-area classrooms where language learning takes place during content learning. Scholars have suggested that more attention needs to be given to how teachers teach language in content-area classrooms and that research findings across program contexts should speak to/build on each other. This systematic review draws on sociolinguistic theories to synthesize 199 studies from 2012 –2022 about teacher understandings and practices regarding content-language integration across CBI programs worldwide, including content and language integrated learning (CLIL), English medium of instruction (EMI), immersion or dual language bilingual education (DLBE), and English as a second/additional language (ESL/EAL). Studies described uneven understandings of the content-language relationship and indicated a variety of content-language integration practices (e.g., teaching disciplinary literacy, encouraging discussion, translanguaging, writing language objectives, using visuals, and collaborating between content and language teachers). However, researchers reported challenges including lack of training, time, and curricular guidance. Based on these findings, we offer directions for research and educator preparation/professional learning to help teachers implement content-language integrated practices that support multilingual learners in developing deep content and language learning in content-area classrooms across contexts.
Статья посвящена анализу актуальных публикаций в англоязычной научной периодической печати, в которых представлено применение трансъязычия (translanguaging) в качестве педагогического метода или инструмента, в том числе на школьных и вузовских занятиях при изучении языков или специализированных предметов на иностранном языке (предметно-языковое интегрированное обучение, CLIL). Актуальность исследования обусловлена новизной теоретической концепции трансъязычия, активно развиваемой в настоящее время зарубежными учеными и педагогами-практиками. Статья направлена на раскрытие сущности трансъязычия как педагогического метода, репрезентацию существующих и перспективных методических разработок в этой области. Ведущими методами в исследовании выступили анализ, синтез, сравнение. Выборка исследования включала в себя 76 публикаций в рецензируемых зарубежных англоязычных научных периодических изданиях, в том числе включенных в международные научные базы и системы цитирования. В статье выявлены основные подходы зарубежных специалистов к применению трансъязычия на занятиях в школе и вузе, формы трансъязыковой работы со школьниками и студентами, отмечены некоторые педагогические ситуации, свидетельствующие об эффективности этих подходов и форм. Представленные в статье материалы позволяют сделать вывод о том, что хотя трансъязычие как совокупность педагогических инструментов в целом находится на стадии развития и совершенствования, в отечественной образовательной среде имеющиеся наработки в области педагогического трансъязычия могут с пользой применяться в преподавании русского языка как иностранного, а также на вузовских направлениях подготовки с языком обучения отличным от русского, предназначенных для иностранных граждан.
The article represents an analysis of recent publications in the English-language scientific periodical press, detailing the application of translanguaging as a pedagogical method or tool, particularly in school and university classes when studying languages or specialized subjects in a foreign language (content-language integrated learning, CLIL). The relevance of the study is due to the novelty of the theoretical concept of translanguaging, which is currently being actively developed by global scholars and practitioners. The article aims at revealing the essence of translanguaging as a pedagogical method, as well as representing the existing and promising methodological developments in this area. The leading methods in the study were analysis, synthesis, comparison. The empirical data comprised 76 publications in peer-reviewed English-language scientific periodicals, counting those included in international scientific databases and citation systems. The article reveals the principal approaches of global specialists to applying translanguaging in both school and university classrooms, as well as forms of translingual work with schoolchildren and students; some pedagogical situations are noted to testify to the effectiveness of these approaches and forms. The materials presented in the article enable to conclude that although translanguaging as a set of pedagogical tools as a whole is currently at the stage of its development and improvement, the Russian educational system may welcome the developments in the field of pedagogical translanguaging to be effectively applied in teaching Russian as a foreign language, as well as in higher education environments with a language of instruction other than Russian, intended for foreign students.
Translanguaging is a new pedagogical approach which is use inclassroom for bilingual education, moderate number of research have beenconducted to investigate whether translanguaging have an effect onteaching learning process for bilingual student. The purpose of this study isto evaluate the effect of having contributes to the knowledge base ontranslanguaging instruction through the design, implementation, andexamination of students' engagement with the content taught in a set oflessons using translanguaging. For this study ten students were selectedfrom grade 6. Mixed methods including experimental analysis withethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, and a criticaldiscourse analysis of the research basis for an intervention curriculum usedwith particular students, the current work relies exclusively on datacollected from ethnographic observation and eld notes, and audio andvideo recordings of student interactions that were transcribed. Moreover,while the observations in the larger study covered entire school days acrossquarter of the year, the current study reports only on observations duringscience instructional time. Interactions during class time, including thedelivery of instruction, student work, and assessment, were observed andaudio recorded with the researcher taking eld notes and occasionallyserving as a participant-observer assisting in teaching and classroommanagement. These lessons were based on a language-based Englishreading curriculum for Tamil-English bilingual junior secondary students(grade 6). Our approach to translanguaging pedagogy was characterizedby a) use of bilingual texts; b) exible language use; and c) bilinguallanguage instruction. Translanguaged instruction supported students'metalinguistic awareness and cognitive engagement, and enabled them toposition themselves as expert linguists. This study provides evidenceabout the affordances of translanguaging instruction, which is needed tocontinue stimulating the ideological shift from monolingual tomultilingual perspectives in the education of bilingual students.Keywords: Translanguaging, Bilingual Education, Pedagogy, Cognition,Code switching, Code mixing, Translation
(PDF) Facilitating Teaching and Learning process by using Translanguaging in a Bilingual Science Classroom. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380605104_Facilitating_Teaching_and_Learning_process_by_using_Translanguaging_in_a_Bilingual_Science_Classroom [accessed Jun 23 2024].
Contrary to Communicative Language Teaching ideology, translanguaging exploits the collective linguistic output that potentially adds to the language learning capacity of learners. It has emerged as an empowering tool for bi/multilingual learners of a language. The following research questions will be asked: 1) How can translanguaging enrich students’ writing skills in the Target Language (TL)? 2) What are the drawbacks that may be encountered? 3) How does translanguaging go beyond the conventional approach to classroom learning? The study will focus on the mixed method approach employing a semi structured questionnaire and interviews. Anderson’s (2017 as cited in Turnbull, 2019) translanguaging continuum will be used as a reference point for this research. The results will be collated to examine the difference in responses and to see which strategy produces more favourable outcomes. This study will help to legitimize the use of translanguaging in the classroom as a means of maximizing students' potential of meaning-making activity.
Exploring language ideology and pedagogy, this article details two approaches utilized to bridge theory and practice in a class on second language acquisition for preservice teachers.
This article presents a multifaceted representation of the in-school reading experiences and ideas about academic reading shared by five adolescent Latina long-term English learners (LTELs). It uses data collected during ethnographic observations of the five focal students’ biology and English language arts classrooms and in-depth qualitative interviews with these students and selected teachers to contextualize their standardized reading test scores. The findings of this yearlong multiple case study illustrate that the focal students’ everyday experience of in-school reading focused on constructing meaning with texts orally in a group. During these classroom reading activities, the teacher played a primary role in facilitating comprehension. On the other hand, the standardized tests that were used to determine their English proficiency required reading to be a silent and independent activity. Moreover, the ideas about academic reading that these students shared reflected their daily experiences with oral reading. By calling attention to the distinction between academic reading on tests and in the classroom, this research documents that what constitutes academic reading is not static across all contexts. These findings contribute to existing work that moves away from seeing academic literacy as a set of decontextualized language skills; this research highlights the socially situated nature of reading. Additionally, these findings problematize the exclusive attribution, without further investigation, of standardized reading test scores to LTELs’ English proficiency. This work speaks to the importance of a more holistic understanding of the literacy development of students who are considered to be LTELs.
This study responds to the Italian Ministry of Education mandate that, starting the 2013–2014 academic year, CLIL be implemented in the final year of high school, during content time, by content teachers with C1-level competence in English. This decision raises numerous concerns, at least in Calabria: most content teachers have, at best, B1-level English competence and consider CLIL the final straw in an overburdened scholastic curriculum. Secondly, EFL teachers without sufficient content competence are reluctant to contribute to CLIL initiatives, seeing themselves reduced into ‘walking (technical) dictionaries.’ Content-driven task-based activities were therefore developed to enable both the EFL teacher (Grandinetti) to work within her comfort zone on an advanced-level science topic and an experienced science teacher (Langellotti), with ‘only’ B1-level English-competence, to fulfil the L1-science curriculum. Such ‘professional limitations’ prompted the development of CLIL activities which necessarily scaffold between comprehensible language and accessible content, transforming teacher-centred lecturing into learner-centred learning. The materials used and the theories guiding their development are presented, alongside analyses of classroom discourse. Positive learning outcomes were obtained and more importantly, maintained, especially from normally disaffected students. Since the sub-optimally bilingual reality of Calabria may reflect many international contexts, delineating how content and language teachers ‘can CLIL’ within their comfort zones will ensure that CLIL contributes successfully to international mainstream bilingual education.
An updated third edition was published in 2018. An pdf version is available for free download from the Center for Applied Linguistics: https://www.cal.org/resource-center/publications-products/guiding-principles-3
This study investigated how students learning English and students learning Spanish activated multilingual
repertoires as they participated in one high school program that aimed to promote reciprocal
learning and teaching of multilingual literacy practices. Grounded in sociocultural theory, we examined
how students drew upon Spanish, English, and translanguaging as cultural and cognitive tools
to mediate learning in a Third Space. Data collection included participant observations in 40 sessions,
student writing, interviews, and audio/video recordings of peer interactions as they engaged in
composing and revising of text together. Using interactional ethnography and microgenetic analysis,
we analyzed mediation of learning opportunities across and between languages and found evidence
of students co-constructing knowledge and expanding multilingual repertoires. Findings contribute
to second language acquisition research by revealing fluid and reciprocal affordances for language
learning during interactions among linguistically diverse peers as they draw upon translanguaging
practices. By shedding light on an alternative educational context that mobilizes young people’s
diverse funds of knowledge, the findings have implications for educational practices that support
equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
This chapter presents a framework for effective science teaching for English language learners (ESTELL) based on two bodies of sociocultural research— the CREDE Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy and the integrated science, language, and literacy instruction literature—which provide converging lines of empirical evidence for a set of socially, culturally, and linguistically re-sponsive instructional practices that have been demonstrated to improve the achievement of English language learners (ELLs). ESTELL is an instructional approach integrating the teaching of scientific inquiry, science discourse, and language and literacy development in a contextualized curriculum that is cul-turally, socially, and linguistically responsive. This chapter presents a review of the theoretical framework for ESTELL, empirical evidence of impact on ELLs' learning, and a set of instructional exemplars of ESTELL pedagogy.
This qualitative, sociolinguistic research study examines how bilingual
Latino/a students use their linguistic resources in the classroom and
laboratory during science instruction. This study was conducted in a
school in the southwestern United States serving an economically
depressed, predominantly Latino population. The object of study was a
fifth grade science class entirely comprised of language minority
students transitioning out of bilingual education. Therefore, English
was the means of instruction in science, supported by informal
peer-to-peer Spanish-language communication. This study is grounded in a
social constructivist paradigm. From this standpoint, learning science
is a social process where social, cultural, and linguistic factors are
all considered crucial to the process of acquiring scientific knowledge.
The study was descriptive in nature, examining specific linguistic
behaviors with the purpose of identifying and analyzing the linguistic
functions of students' utterances while participating in science
learning. The results suggest that students purposefully adapt their use
of linguistic resources in order to facilitate their participation in
science leaning. What is underscored in this study is the importance of
explicitly acknowledging, supporting, and incorporating bilingual
students' linguistic resources both in Spanish and English into the
science classroom in order to optimize students' participation and
facilitate their understanding.
This article presents data from a study examining secondary mathematics teachers’ and science teachers’ implementation of a language of instruction policy in Malaysia, which made English the medium for mathematics and science instruction. It explores the beliefs of math, science and language teachers, and how these beliefs influence their pedagogical practices in content-based language instruction classrooms. The study uses a mixed-methods approach for data collection and data analysis. Data is analysed using perspectives from content-based language teaching (CBLT) and from research on mathematics and science instruction for English language learners (ELLs). The results indicate that teachers’ beliefs about their respective roles as only content teachers or only language teachers limit students’ language learning opportunities. Factors such as curricular requirements, exam pressure and time constraints also shape classroom interactions, and have implications for student learning as well. The findings reveal the lack of collaboration between content and language teachers, and the need for sustained professional development concerning content and language integration for both groups of teachers. This study extends work on content-based language teaching to the previously unexamined Malaysian context. Its findings contribute to the ongoing work of improving instructional practices in content-based classrooms to integrate and maximize content and language learning for English language learners.
The National Research Council (2011) released “A Framework for K–12 Science Education” that is guiding the development of the Next Generation Science Standards, which are expected to be finalized in early 2013. This article addresses language demands and opportunities that are embedded in the science and engineering practices delineated in the Framework. By examining intersections between learning of science and learning of language, the article identifies key features of the language of the science classroom as students engage in these language-intensive science and engineering practices. We propose that when students, especially English language learners, are adequately supported to “do” specific things with language, both science learning and language learning are promoted. We highlight implications for Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics.
Programs and policies related to the education of English learners are often based on the belief that fluency in English is the primary, if not sole, requirement for academic success. While English is in fact necessary for academic success in U.S. schools, so is a strong base in content-area academics. This study investigated the effects of track placement and English proficiency on secondary English learners’ academic achievement while taking students’ previous schooling and length of time enrolled in U.S. schools into account. In the case of a variety of outcomes, track placement was a better predictor of achievement than proficiency in English. Results indicate that track placement is a better predictor of English learners’ academic performance than proficiency in English, highlighting the importance of quality instruction for English learners.
By extending the notion of metroethnicity, this paper proposes the notion of metrolingualism, creative linguistic practices across borders of culture, history and politics. Metrolingualism gives us a way to move beyond current terms such as ‘multilingualism’ and ‘multiculturalism’. It is a product of modern and often urban interaction, describing the ways in which people of different and mixed backgrounds use, play with and negotiate identities through language. The focus is not so much on language systems as on languages as emergent from contexts of interaction. Looking at data from workplaces where metrolingual language use is common, we show how the use of both fixed and fluid linguistic and cultural identities is part of the process of language use. The notion of metrolingualism gives us ways of moving beyond common frameworks of language, providing insights into contemporary, urban language practices, and accommodating both fixity and fluidity in its approach to language use.
Facing the rapidly increasing non-native English speaking students in public schools, all teachers are challenged by an urgent need for developing ways to make their instruction responsive to these students' needs. This article reports on a year long study on three biology teachers' language integrated biology teaching to non-native English speaking students. Using extensive classroom observations and interviews the study provides portraits of these three teachers' working with multilingual, multicultural, and multilevel students. The findings suggest that subject matter area teachers should and can extend their teaching competencies to be sensitive to these students' language and cultural needs and to integrate their instruction for the second language development with their curricular objectives.
Grounded in sociocultural theory, this study uses an ecological approach to examine how student interactions within a dual-language school context may offer affordances for increased linguistic and conceptual understanding. Using qualitative analysis of student discourse, this paper focuses on data from recorded interactions between pairs of fifth-grade students engaged in writing activities (in English and Spanish). Findings demonstrated that the following key contextual factors cultivated a space for languaging (Swain, 2006), and thus enhanced conceptual understanding: 1) the interplay of two languages as academic tools; 2) the recognition of learners' expertise and distinct linguistic funds of knowledge; 3) opportunities for co-construction; and 4) student and teacher strategies that call attention to language. This study has implications for the education of language-minority students in English-medium classrooms and suggests that teachers should cultivate learning spaces that draw upon their students' other languages in order to promote a deeper analysis of English. This study urges future research to more closely consider reciprocal affordances for language learning among bilingual learners and seeks to bridge insight across the fields of second language acquisition and bilingualism.
Cultivating interaction among English Language Learners (ELLs) and their non-ELL peers remains a desirable, yet often elusive, goal. While existing literature documents the challenges of ELL/non-ELL interaction and proposes strategies for overcoming them, there is little research examining concrete episodes of interaction from both the ELL and non-ELL perspectives. In response, I explore how a group of refugee and immigrant high school students (ELLs and non-ELLs) negotiated their interaction while collaboratively creating a digital video. In particular, I consider the role of the “language barrier” and how the participants interacted through and despite language. In the tradition of humanities-oriented educational research, I draw on Levinasian philosophy to reflect on the relational and ethical aspects of ELL/non-ELL interaction. Findings suggest that while language played a key role, communication obstacles tended to defy simple and strategic anticipation and resolution. Negotiation of meaning was often a creative, situated, and multidirectional process. Most importantly, interaction seemed to be ultimately about people in relationship—uncertain and at times uncomfortable, but also full of promise and opportunities for ethical response. I propose opening spaces as a new approach to ELL/non-ELL interaction that foregrounds human and ethical dimensions. Such reframing dislodges the issue from common assumptions which may unwittingly reduce ELLs to a “language problem,” and it honors the potential of participants creatively working out the interaction for themselves. By pursuing insights from both ELLs and non-ELLs, this study offers an important perspective rarely explored in the literature.
As the first chapter in Part II, this chapter turns its attention to education. Focusing on the growing multilingualism in schools, the chapter reviews traditional definitions and types of bilingual education. It frames foreign/second language education, as well as bilingual education, as ways of enacting parallel monolingualisms, and then reviews ways in which this is resisted in classrooms all over the world. It also presents ways in which educators are promoting flexible languaging in teaching, transgressing the strict structures of dual language bilingual classrooms, as well as going beyond the traditional view of separate languages literacies.
Students with disabilities are a group for whom opportunity to learn (OTL) and educational assessment present special issues of public policy and challenges for educational research and practice. These challenges highlight both the powerful prospects for improving schools and the significant limitations inherent in current practice. One commentator has suggested that “when read critically, special education provides the structural and cultural insights that are necessary to begin reconstructing public education for the historical conditions of the twenty-first century and, ultimately, for reconciling it with its democratic ideals” (Skrtic 1991, 206). Children with disabilities were a group long excluded from our nation's schools. In 1974, Congress estimated that more than a million children with disabilities were not in school (Hehir and Gamm 1999; Pullin 1999). When a commitment was made to educate this population, it was embedded in a series of state and federal legal protections that define access to educational opportunity in a manner quite different from the opportunities afforded to students without disabilities. Although our system of educating students with disabilities is far from perfect in either design or implementation, examination of the treatment of students with disabilities affords a different lens for viewing the challenges associated with providing every child with a full and fair opportunity to learn utilizing appropriate and meaningful testing and assessment. Almost nine percent of the students in the country, more than six million children and youth, received special education services in 2002 under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); almost half of these students were those placed in the category of individuals with specific learning disabilities (U.S. Department of Education 2004).
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.AtkinsonDwight. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. xii + 190. - Volume 34 Issue 3 - Houxiang Li
This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom in a transitional bilingual education program in a well-established Mexican American community in San Antonio, Texas. The data suggest that the participants move fluidly between not just Spanish and English, but also the standard and vernacular varieties, a movement that is called translanguaging (O. García, 2009). Translanguaging through TexMex enables the teacher and students to create discursive spaces that allow them to engage with the social meanings in school from their position as bilingual Latinos. The teacher's adoption of a flexible bilingual pedagogy (Creese & Blackledge, 2010) allows for translanguaging in the classroom not only as a way of making sense of content and learning language, but also as a legitimized means of performing desired identities.
In recent years, TESOL scholars have offered both explicit and implicit critiques of language ideologies developed within nationalist frameworks that positioned monolingualism in a standardized national language as the desired outcome for all citizens. These scholars have used insights from both the social and the natural sciences to call into question static conceptualizations of language and have reconceptualized language pedagogy in ways that place the fluid and dynamic language practices of bilingual students at the center of instruction. This dynamic turn in TESOL has informed the emergence of plurilingualism as a policy ideal among language education scholars in the European Union. This article argues that this shift in the field of TESOL parallels the characteristics of the ideal neoliberal subject that fits the political and economic context of the current sociohistorical period—in particular, the desire for flexible workers and lifelong learners to perform service-oriented and technological jobs as part of a post-Fordist political economy. These parallels indicate a need for a more critical treatment of the concept of plurilingualism to avoid complicity with the promotion of a covert neoliberal agenda. The article ends with a framework for TESOL that works against the grain of neoliberal governance.
The undisputed position of English as the “international language of science” has resulted in a push for its use in college science classrooms in non-English-dominant contexts worldwide. This study uses classroom observation and interviews to examine the use of Spanish and English in college science classrooms at a land-grant university in Puerto Rico. Using an ecology of languages framework, and particularly drawing on Hornberger's Continua of Biliteracy for the study of learning in bilingual contexts, analysis of 15 class observations and interviews showed that professors used multiple classroom translanguaging practices to teach science. At the same time, they held strongly to the ideology of English as “the language of science” and believed it was important for all science students to use English. Thus, professors' practices and their ideologies rested on opposing ends of the context continua of biliteracy.
This article introduces the concept of nation-state/colonial governmentality as a framework for analyzing the ways current language ideologies marginalize the language practices of subaltern populations. Specifically, the article focuses on the innate limitations of re-appropriating nation-state/colonial governmentality in an attempt to advocate for the subaltern. It offers the case of bilingual education in the United States to demonstrate this point. It argues that although the struggle for bilingual education in the United States re-appropriated nation-state/colonial governmentality in ways that advocated for language-minoritized populations, this re-appropriation was eventually reincorporated into hegemonic language ideologies that continue to reproduce colonial relations of power that erase the fluid language practices of language-minoritized students. The article ends with some recommendations for moving toward a language ideology that allows subaltern voices to be heard outside of colonial relations of power.
This qualitative study was concerned with examining the first language of young Mexicano bilinguals who had already learned enough English to work in all-English classrooms. In order to capture natural language usage within the school setting, five focal children were chosen, observed and audiotaped throughout their school day, for a period of roughly four months. This research presents data on the functions that Spanish continued to serve in the lives of these developing bilinguals. Additionally, it describes the competence they showed in their Spanish. Throughout their school day, in different roles, and in distinct contexts, the children used Spanish in varied and complex ways: (a) to provide information and assistance with school work; (b) to seek explanations, information and clarification; (c) to provide their own self-talk which helped them think through problems, plan strategies and assess their own work; d) to establish and maintain a variety of social relationships, juggling changes in friendships and group tensions; (e) to integrate their out-of-school worlds into their school world through narratives, commentary, play and imagination; and (f) to negotiate and maintain participation in on-going conversations. These descriptions and analyses of naturally-occurring Spanish language interactions have contributed to a more detailed picture of the young bilingual’s first language in contact situations.
THIS STUDY explored, with both experimental and correlational designs, the roles of (a) authentic, communicatively functional reading and writing and (b) the explicit explanation of genre function and features on growth in genre-specific reading and writing abilities of children in grades two and three. The genres used for this exploration were informational and procedural science texts. Sixteen grade 2 classes participated, 10 of which were followed through grade 3, (N = 420), in one of two conditions: (a) authentic reading/writing of science informational and procedural texts or (b) authentic reading and writing of these genres with the addition of explicit explanation of language features typical of each. Growth was modeled across six assessment time points using Hierarchical Linear Modeling. Results showed no effect of explicit teaching on reading and writing growth for six of seven outcomes. Similarly, correlational analyses showed no relationship between teachers' degree of explicitness and growth for six of seven measures. However, correlational analyses showed a strong relationship between degree of authenticity of reading and writing activities during science instruction and growth for four of seven outcomes, with an interaction with degree of explicitness for a fifth. Children from homes with lower levels of parental education grew at the same rate as those from homes with higher levels, and findings regarding explicitness and authenticity also did not differ by level of education. These results add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of involving students in reading and writing for real-life purposes in the classroom. They also contribute to a growing knowledge base regarding the complexities of language learning in school.
This article argues that language teaching would benefit by paying attention to the L2 user rather than concentrating primarily on the native speaker. It suggests ways in which language teaching can apply an L2 user model and exploit the students' L1. Because L2 users differ from monolingual native speakers in their knowledge of their L2s and L1s and in some of their cognitive processes, they should be considered as speakers in their own right, not as approximations to monolingual native speakers. In the classroom, teachers can recognise this status by incorporating goals based on L2 users in the outside world, bringing L2 user situations and roles into the classroom, deliberately using the students' L1 in teaching activities, and looking to descriptions of L2 users or L2 learners rather than descriptions of native speakers as a source of information. The main benefits of recognising that L2 users are speakers in the own right, however, will come from students' and teachers' having a positive image of L2 users rather than seeing them as failed native speakers.
This book addresses how the new linguistic concept of ‘Translanguaging’ has contributed to our understandings of language, bilingualism and education, with potential to transform not only semiotic systems and speaker subjectivities, but also social structures.
Sociolinguists have long recognized that language is a social construct, and have found elusive any firm definition of what constitutes a language in relation to overlapping varieties. On the other hand, it is long established that language is recruited by nations, communities and individuals for its symbolic value and distinctiveness. Whereas the first of these positions views language as fluid and changing, with permeable boundaries, the second stresses the fixed, rigid nature of language. This paper describes how these two positions are played out in the multilingual contexts of four English cities, in complementary schools where young students learn Bengali, Cantonese, Gujarati, Mandarin, and Turkish. In the research reported here we observed a broad range of multilingual practices across a variety of settings in schools, and at the boundaries of school and home. From these practices we identify two seemingly contradictory positions in relation to participants’ bilingualism: an ideology which argues for ‘language separation’ and one in which ‘flexible bilingualism’ flourishes as a practice. These two positions can be said to illustrate the dynamic tension described in sociolinguistic research, which has often viewed language as fluid and overlapping, while at the same time acknowledging language as a social construct which demarcates and reifies identities. The paper looks at how students and teachers simultaneously lived both ‘separate’ and ‘flexible’ positions, and navigated between them interactively and discursively. Our analysis suggests that relations between ‘language’ and ‘ideology’ are far from straightforward for the young people and teachers in complementary schools. The heteroglossic reality of multilingual practice, with its flexible movement across and between ‘languages’, is underpinned by the social structures of which such interactions are a part.
Translanguaging is both going between different linguistic structures and systems and going beyond them. It includes the full range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of information and the representation of values, identities and relationships. Translanguaing space is a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a space created through translanguaging. It is a space where the process of what Bhabha calls “cultural translation” between traditions takes place. The notion of translanguaging space embraces the concepts of creativity and criticality, which are fundamental but hitherto under-explored dimensions of multilingual practices. Using a combination of observation of multilingual practices and metalanguage commentaries by three Chinese youths in Britain, the article retells their experiences of growing up in a society which is dominated by a variety of monolingual ideologies, their multilingual practices and the creativity and criticality shown through such practices, the identity positions they construct and present for themselves, and the social spaces they create and occupy within the wider space they find themselves in. It examines the following themes: fun with words, from weekend bilingualism to flexible multilingualism, creating space and cultivating relationships, and transnational space. In examining these themes, a method, called Moment Analysis, is proposed, which aims to capture what appears to be spur-of-the-moment actions that are semiotically highly significant to the actors and their subsequent actions, what prompted such actions and the consequences of such moments including the reactions by other people.
This review examines current research on teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) in four content area subjects: History, math, English, and science. The following topics are examined in each content area: The linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural features of academic literacy and how this literacy can be taught; general investigations of teaching; and professional development or teacher education issues. The article summarizes key findings in the literature, examining trends and discontinuities across the different content areas, and concludes with implications for teaching and suggestions for further research.
The language used to construct knowledge, beliefs, and worldviews in school science is distinct from the social language that students use in their everyday ordinary life. This difference is a major source of reading difficulty for many students, especially struggling readers and English-language learners. This article identifies some of the linguistic challenges involved in reading middle-school science texts and suggests several teaching strategies to help students cope with these challenges. It is argued that explicit attention to the unique language of school science should be an integral part of science literacy pedagogy.
To expand knowledge about young immigrant populations and to document how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) affects the education of English language learner (ELL) and limited English proficient (LEP) students, the Urban Institute was funded by the Foundation for Child Development to undertake a series of reports. This policy brief draws on this work to address the main question guiding the series: "has NCLB improved education for ELLs as schools have become accountable for these students' performance?" This question applies not only to the educational levels subject to the law but to pre-K as well, for which there have been spillover effects. After presenting an overview of the ELL population's demographic profile, this brief focuses on the findings of the statistical portrait of schools and the case studies to answer the main research question. The findings reveal that, while implementation of NCLB in high-LEP schools has resulted in some problems for ELL students' education, the net effect of the law has been positive because it has (1) increased attention paid to ELL students; (2) increased the alignment of curriculum, instruction, professional development, and testing; and (3) raised the bar for ELL student achievement. The brief discusses the implications of the findings and gives recommendations for strengthening the potentially positive effects of NCLB on the education of ELL students. By documenting the benefits of spillover effects of the law on pre-K education, the brief also looks ahead to the reauthorization of NCLB and the implications of expanding the law to include this educational level. (Contains 5 figures and 7 endnotes.)
This book examines the experiences of four Mexican children in American middle schools struggling to learn English. It discusses policy and instructional dilemmas surrounding English language education for immigrant children. Using analysis of the children's oral and written language and examination of their classrooms, schools, and communities, the book addresses difficulties surrounding English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching and learning. An introduction, "Immigrant Children in Schools," describes the study. The first three chapters examine: (1) "Immigrant Children and the Teaching of English" (educating English language learners and acquisition of English in classroom settings); (2) "The Town, the School, and the Students" (new immigrants at the middle schools, middle school ESL programs, and challenges and realities); and (3) "Teaching English at Garden Middle School." The next four chapters highlight the four students: (4) "Lilian," (5) "Elisa," (6) "Manolo," and (7) "Bernardo," examining such issues as: the classroom, starting out, access to English at school, sheltered classes, student progress, and looking to the future. The book concludes with (8) "Learning and Not Learning English" (policy and practice implications, effective schooling for immigrants, politics of teaching English, and toward a critical pedagogy in ESL). (Contains 137 references.) (SM)