Teachers inquiring into translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies: emerging creative and critical entanglements during transnational professional development

ABSTRACT

Our reflexive study responds to the need for learning about translanguaging and multimodality as entangled pedagogies in non-English-dominant contexts from teachers’ perspectives. This conceptual-empirical article re-examines a yearlong ethnographic study which traced how a community of seven in-service English language teachers in Colombia and the United States collaborated online and in person to make sense of and use translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies innovatively. Drawing on the notion of entanglements (assemblages of interconnections, events, people, practices, and resources that reveal tensions and translanguaging and multimodalities), we conceptualize them as enmeshed with social contexts. We ask, “What entanglements emerge when teachers implement translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies to enrich their practice in a context with inequitable access? Data sources include bilingual interviews, fieldnotes, and teacher-produced multimodal texts. We use dialogic reflexivity and vignettes to discuss teachers’ creation of new entanglements of translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies within the constraints of their setting. Emerging insights include 1) awareness of unequal access; 2) critical use of multimodalities and translanguaging for advocacy; 3) understandings of translanguaging and multimodalities for equitable access; and 4) translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies as creative, assemblages of interconnections, events, people, practices, and resources. These entangled pedagogies enabled teachers’ creativity and criticallity.

KEYWORDS:

• Entanglements
• multimodalities
• teachers
• translanguaging
• vignettes

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the amazing teachers who participated in the transnational professional development: Caro, Gabriela, Maria, Miss J, Gabriel, Beto, and Leo. Their stories, and creative and critical insights inspired us on this year-long learning journey. Special thanks to Caro for leading the teachers at the Colombian site. Our thanks to Jermaine McDougald for supporting this professional development in his role of teacher academic coordinator. We thank the issue co-editors Drs. Raul Mora, Ruth Harman, and Zhongfeng Tian for advocating to include novice voices from international researchers in the field. We thank the reviewers for their valuable insights. We would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Lorimer for her contributions on literacies and language ideologies and Dr. Torrey Trust and Fred Zinn for critical uses of digital tools for teachers’ professional development. We also thank Marielos Arlen Marin for her support. These contributions nourished the original study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by The Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia Colciencias [Doctoral Scholarship 647] and Colfuturo Fundación para el future de Colombia [Convocatoria 2014]; Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (COLCIENCIAS) [Doctoral Scholarship 646];Fundación para el futuro de Colombia [Convocatoria Exterior 2014];

Notes on contributors

Rosa Alejandra Medina Riveros

Rosa Alejandra Medina Riveros Lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has a PhD in Education: Language, Literacy and Culture from the same institution. She uses ethnographic, decolonial/decolonizing, critical and posthumanist epistemologies to study translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies as critical, creative, and collaborative social practices. She is an affiliated researcher at Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, Lectoescrinautas Colciencias research group in Colombia. She also teaches in the TESOL program at CUNY, College of Staten Island.

Maria José Botelho

Maria José Botelho Professor of Language, Literacy & Culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is interested in how K-12 school literacy practices can be reimagined to affirm children’s cultural and linguistic knowledges as well as to offer tools for cultural production and social participation. Dr. Botelho puts to work feminist poststructuralism/posthumanism/ethnography/critical discourse analysis. Her current research explores ethnographic epistemologies and critical literacies for experienced and preservice teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of multimodal literacies education.

Theresa Austin

Theresa Austin Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, uses several critical sociocultural theories to examine language and literacy in formulating education policies and planning for multilingual learners and teacher education. Her research examines the relationship between classrooms and broader social contexts. Dr. Austin engages in narrative inquiry, discursive analysis and ethnographic research in collaboration with teachers, students, and researchers who cross national boundaries for learning world languages and literacies (e.g., AAVE, ESL/EFL, Spanish and Japanese).

Diana Angélica Parra Pérez

Diana Angélica Parra Pérez Language teacher in the School of Languages at Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. Her research interests are technology mediated language learning and language teachers’ professional development. She develops open educational resources for learning English and Spanish as a Foreign Language. She is an affiliated researcher at the Language Learning and Teaching - Universidad de La Sabana (LALETUS) research group.