Examining multidirectional flows of language and knowledge for equitable access to STEM and biliteracy education

Long ago, François Gouin chronicled his journey abroad to Germany and his attempt to learn a new language by memorizing an entire dictionary. He self-imposed a “quarantine and prohibited every walk and every dialogue which was not an absolute necessity” (1892, p. 29). Coming out of his isolation, he felt ready to interact with the folks in his new environment and learn at a university. Alas, he found that he could not form intelligible sentences and so was unable to interact with locals or understand the lectures he had deprived himself of all month long. With each failed attempt, he returned to his room to memorize more reference tools. At one time he became temporarily blind yet, he returned to his process. Finally, he gave up. Returning home after an absence of nearly a year, he found that his nephew of three years was now speaking with a very well-developed vocabulary. Intrigued by the magical process of language acquisition, he set out to observe his nephew’s language skills. He noticed how his nephew learned by engaging in multimodal activities, pausing to ask questions, and revoicing what the adults had explained. His nephew’s world of interacting with new content knowledge and language was a stark contrast to his dependency on memorization. Gouin realized the importance of observing, practicing, and learning language in a meaningful context. Similarly, Emergent Bilinguals are poised to acquire both content and language when the classroom is set up to build on the foundation learners already bring to the classroom and provides socioculturally rich, context-embedded opportunities to continue to develop their native language skills and to acquire new content. Surely, Gouin had a wealth of knowledge that he could have used to make connections in his new environment. Today, bilingual education classes provide children with opportunities to experience language across the content areas like mathematics, science, social studies, music, and art to name a few. Learning is dynamic, a stark contrast to learning in isolation and through memorization.

Equitable access of STEM content knowledge regardless of language proficiency

A misconception about Emergent Bilinguals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics classrooms (STEM) is that language mastery is a prerequisite for accessing and mastering these academic disciplines and their respective content. However, the reality is that conceptual elements, knowledge, and skills transfer across languages through what Cummins refers to as a Common Underlying Proficiency (2005). Just as Gouin’s experiences described above suggests, schools ought not rely on activities that focus on learning isolated language. The same argument can be made for the isolated learning of content without taking advantage of multidirectional and interdisciplinary connections between knowledge and experience in multiple content area subjects. Akin to the monoglossic one language/one approach to language instruction that predominates in many classrooms today, transformative approaches show promise in classrooms that incorporate both students’ multiple linguistic repertoires, their varied academic experiences, and cultural knowledge. English mastery should be the determining factor for access to content knowledge. When educators challenge the social construction of who can be a scientist, mathematician, or artist, who can possess knowledge, and whose language counts, we can start to erode at institutional gatekeeping mechanisms that disproportionately affect ethnic minorities and women in the STEM fields (Yuen, Bonner, Arreguin-Anderson, Campbell, & Trevisan, 2018).

Seizing on contextually rich opportunities for talk and exploration and the development of content and language in the STEM bilingual classroom

Scott Grapin’s (2019)work has illustrated the ways in which an incorporation of a wide array of multimodalities such as models in the science content classroom allows Emergent Bilinguals not just to learn language but to engage in disciplinary work and moves away from a deficit view of Emergent Bilinguals toward an “asset view that capitalizes on the diverse meaning making resources they bring into the classroom” (p. 35). Scholars have proposed the inclusion of the Arts in STEM as a way to encourage multi- or transdisciplinary perspectives and learning processes (Quigley, Herro, & Jamil, 2017) across subject areas. The purposeful inclusion of the Arts and Humanities speaks to the possibilities of the incorporation of multimodal literacies (Smith, Pacheco, & Khorosheva, 2021; Takeuchi, 2015) and multimodal texts such as videos, sound, images, tactile productions, artifacts, realia, graphics, and gestures in bilingual education to expand children’s pathways to learning both content and language (Fernandes, Kahn, & Civil, 2017). While the incorporation of these various modes is a promising way for Emergent Bilingual students to engage with content across the content areas more research is needed in the ways the Arts can be better interwoven to strengthen interdisciplinary learning.

Multidirectional bridges for content and language development

This third issue of the forty fourth volume of the BRJ is a call to expand the ways in which we recognize knowledge, experiences, and literacies that students have acquired, well before they step foot into classrooms. It is a call to examine instructional conceptions of what constitutes language and knowledge and how multidirectional bridges can be built to access and learn new content area knowledge while developing bilingualism. In this issue, several manuscripts examine how building language and knowledge can be leveraged through multidirectional flows of expertise (Castek et al.,2017) in bilingual classrooms in ways that provide learners with equitable access in content areas and literacy.

When referencing Emergent Bilinguals, we typically think of newcomer students entering the U.S. school system. According to Zang and Batalova (2015) the majority of Emergent Bilinguals are born in the United States. Newcomer Emergent Bilingual students arrive with content knowledge represented through various multimodal texts they may have interacted with in their former classroom as well as experiential knowledge from home, school, and community. Although not always recognized by parents and their children, families already engage in the scientific method at home and possess a myriad of knowledge about STEM subject matter in everyday activities. While often not legitimized in schools, this type of knowledge forms the basis for background knowledge and schema from which Emergent Bilinguals make connections with new knowledge and the development of conceptual understanding. The real task for teachers of Emergent Bilinguals is to help them associate disciplinary concepts with the vocabulary of the language (Ovando & Combs, 2018) being learned. Emergent Bilinguals are at times positioned as unable to participate in complex activities until they are able to produce their new second or third language. For example, Joel Mejía chronicled his experience as a transnational Emergent Bilingual returning to the United States having already acquired a great deal of mathematical and science knowledge in México (Mejia, Villanueva, & Revelo, 2022, in Press). He often felt underestimated or discounted by his teachers on account of his lack of English. This recounting of his experiences raises important questions about ways knowledge is measured and legitimized, or not. State and national exams typically measure mathematics and reading mastery in English only, essentially verifying Emergent Bilinguals’ lack of English proficiency, rather than their command of, and experience with, content area knowledge in languages other than English. Olivares-Orellana (2020) showed how placement decisions and pedagogical approaches used with immigrant bilinguals impacts their education experiences and eventual achievement. Rather than planning from deficit perspectives of Emergent Bilinguals, of what language they do not yet possess, let us reimagine the possibilities of learning new knowledge from a STEM perspective that includes the Arts/Humanities’ multimodal literacies and resources like language, speech, symbols, visuals, gestures, manipulatives, models, textures, and sounds to name a few. Incorporating these concepts acquired in the homes and communities of emergent bilinguals allows teachers to start from an already robust foundation for new knowledge.

The first four research articles of Volume 44, Issue 3 of the BRJ represent a subsection dedicated to the instruction of STEM content and bilingualism. The studies illustrate the possibilities of teaching Science, Engineering and Mathematics to Emergent Bilinguals through incorporating multiple linguistic registers, multimodal literacies, experiences, and knowledge. They also stress the professional development of classroom teachers to develop their capacity to foster Emergent Bilinguals’ growth in subjects like science, engineering, and mathematics by learning best practices in language teaching, instructional quality, and increasing their own knowledge of the content itself.

In the opening article, Transmodalising Pedagogy: Developing STEM Disciplinary Literacy for Young Emergent Bilingual Learners, Sujin Kim examines the approaches of two teachers to make STEM content learning more equitable for Emergent Bilingual students from a variety of national origins and experiences. The first and second grade teachers in the study focused on mathematics and science instruction using a variety of multimodal approaches to foster language and content learning by creating opportunities for verbal interaction. The focal early childhood teachers included a variety of context-embedded approaches such as gesturing concepts, providing hands-on opportunities with tactile manipulatives and incorporating audiovisual resources. The use of multiple modalities forms the base for the transmodalizing pedagogies highlighted in this study. Kim’s teachers positioned student languages, knowledge, and experiences as literacies that students brought to the classroom. The interrogations and practices of these teachers, which Kim refers to as critical multiliteracies, demonstrate an approach for examining distribution of power with regard to who has access to learning resources as well as whose identity, culture, and history counts. In addition, Kim’s work demonstrates how the teachers in her study position their students as having the potential to achieve.

The second article, Engineering Design in Dual Language: How Teachers Leveraged Biliteracy Practices to Add Engineering Disciplinary Literacy Practices, authored by Alberto Esquinca, María Teresa de la Piedra, and Lidia Herrera-Rocha, centers on three fourth-grade dual language classroom teachers’ navigation of engineering units in dual language classrooms through science kits. The study consisted of two data sets, one in which two teachers participated in a co-taught classroom and another set from the following year where an additional teacher and class were recruited. The authors sought to elucidate how biliteracy practices can be leveraged to learn the discourse and concepts of engineering in classrooms where opportunities to utilize inquiry-based learning can create equitable access to content and language. While versions of the Student Activity Booklet (SAB) existed in both English and Spanish, the English SAB seemed to be positioned as the legitimate and primary source of information in the first year when the teachers articulated a limited knowledge of engineering discourse. A major shift during the second year was that the teachers felt more comfortable with their knowledge of engineering and therefore used the English SAB sparingly. However, one shift in pedagogical practices was that the teachers chose to supplement their teaching practices with multimodal sources of knowledge such as videos, photos, and teacher created bilingual PowerPoint presentations as a way to provide more context. Capitalizing on the bilingualism and biliteracy practices of their students, the teachers in this study were able to help their students learn engineering discourse. The authors invite educators to reconsider the assumption that command of English is a prerequisite for accessing STEM content.

Ashlyn E. Pierson and Scott E. Grapin authored the article, A Disciplinary Perspective on Translanguaging. In their study, the authors focused on a 9-week STEM course taught to a sixth- grade middle school classroom composed of multilingual students. The study sought to clarify how translanguaging can be employed, not just as a scaffolding practice for comprehension, but rather as a key component of disciplinary work. In other words, encouraging multilingual students to draw from visual, actional, and linguistic modes and recognizing the hybridity in their resources allows learners to engage in sense making. Pierson co-designed and co-taught the lessons employing a translanguaging approach. Another key and central aspect of the research design was the use of models that incorporate multimodalities. The modeling employed ranged from physical models to embodied models, diagrammatic models, and computational models. Ultimately the study encourages teachers to embrace translanguaging practices and combine them with multimodal disciplinary practices that are common in content area education.

The article, Conceptualizing STEM teacher professional knowledge for teaching ELs: Initial impact of subject matter and disciplinary literacy PD on content knowledge and practice reports the results of a study conducted by Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz and Magdalena Pando. The study involved in-service teacher professional development in both Science and Mathematics. Aguirre-Muñoz and Pando highlight the importance of conceptual understanding of content areas for teachers of Emergent Bilinguals. One group of teachers received professional development focused on subject matter knowledge, while the other group received professional development focused on pedagogical knowledge. Both approaches had a component that centered on disciplinary literacy knowledge. However, the group of teachers that received professional development on subject matter knowledge was subdivided into two groups with the order of disciplinary literacy knowledge developed either before or after subject matter knowledge training. The main findings were that science content knowledge of all groups increased while mathematics content knowledge stayed about the same. Aguirre-Muñoz and Pando created a measurement tool, English Learner Instructional Strategy Rubrics (ELISR), to measure instructional quality. They found that instructional quality increased for the teachers who received professional development on subject matter knowledge before disciplinary literacy knowledge. This group of teachers showed traits of improved teaching quality, specifically with Higher Order Thinking Skills and Differentiation skills. These improvements translated to their Emergent Bilingual students receiving better opportunities to learn mathematics and science.

The four research articles that comprise the section on STEM manuscripts are followed by two research articles on the role of family practices and resources that parents of multilingual children employ to develop language and literacy. The penultimate article: Tres formas: Shared reading practices with three types of Spanish and English dual-language learning preschoolers, by Kirsten Read, Paloma Contreras, and Hector Martinez illustrates the diversity among Emergent Bilingual preschool children’s home language and literacy practices. The authors administered surveys to approximately one hundred caregivers to learn about their primary language dominance, the children’s primary language dominance, and home shared reading language choice. Across primary language groups (Spanish, English, both Spanish and English), there were no significant differences in the use of beneficial pre-literacy dialogic reading strategies. The information gleaned from this study highlights the importance of supporting the environments of young Emergent Bilingual children as they learn about languages through literacy activities such as shared book reading and extra-textual dialogic practices.

The last research article for this issue, Understanding the Power of Latinx Families to Support the Academic and Personal Development of Their Children, is written by Lilliana G. Richins, Holly Hansen-Thomas, Victor Lozada, Susan South, and Mary Amanda Stewart. Using Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (2005) framework, the authors describe the various forms of capital that families and teachers of Latinx students recognize and leverage to ensure children’s academic success and healthy identity development. In their collaborative effort, the authors describe ways that seven parents employed aspirational capital, nurtured resistant capital, and cultivated social capital with five classroom teachers. In turn, their children’s teachers recognized and supported the various forms of capital students brought to their classrooms and during the home literacy training activities with parents. This collective relationship between teachers and parents elevates an approach where Latinx students and their parents are seen as possessing valid forms of capital that are assets for literacy development and academic achievement.

Volume 44, issue 3 is complemented by a book review that brings the reader full circle to the four articles in the STEM section. Karina Del Carmen Méndez Pérez reviews Bryan Brown’s book, Science in the City: Culturally relevant STEM education. The book makes the argument for acknowledging the diversity in urban classrooms in terms of both culture and language. Brown recommends that teachers incorporate cultural relevance when teaching science as a way to ameliorate the long-standing practices that disproportionately alienate linguistic minorities and students of color. The book calls on teachers to employ practices such as stories and narratives as an alternative to classroom practices that push students to conform to western ways of thought, knowledge production, and language. The book weaves anecdotes and research to provide teachers with many thought provoking approaches to teaching Science to multilingual and multicultural students.

Summary

Many practices that aid Emergent Bilinguals students in the mastery of language and literacy practices from preschool forward start out in the home (Ryan, 2021). The experiential learning that takes places in this first setting is full of observation, interaction, and exploration. There are no discrete separations of content or language spaces. Given these considerations, classrooms of Emergent Bilingual students should take note of the ways in which they can tap into the various forms of language, knowledge, and capital these learners bring into the classroom. Data from the last National Assessment of Educational Progress (2020) showed that 4th grade Emergent Bilingual students still trail their non-Emergent Bilingual peers by an average of 24 points when assessments are conducted in English only (Hussar et al., 2020). The research articles in this issue of the Bilingual Research Journal present us with innovative teaching practices that value the dual language skills of Emergent Bilingual learners and take up the varied forms of knowledge they possess to build new learning.

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.