Translanguaging for critical multilingual language awareness: preparing teacher candidates to support multilingual learners in classrooms

ABSTRACT

This study brings together translanguaging and critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) (García, 2015, 2017) to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) prepare to support multilingual learners in elementary classrooms. Data was drawn from four TCs in a teacher education course on supporting multilingual learners in Ontario, Canada. Research questions guiding this study were: (1) What are TCs’ stances toward translanguaging, and what factors shape their developing translanguaging stance? (2) How do TCs plan for translanguaging in their lessons? (3) What are the challenges/limitations to TCs’ planning for translanguaging? Data sources, which included TCs’ unit and lesson plans, course assignments, reflections, and interviews were analyzed deductively to identify themes related to their translanguaging stance, and how they planned for translanguaging in their coursework. The findings demonstrate that TCs’ language learning experiences, challenges and identities were factors that shaped their developing translanguaging stance. TCs incorporated many translanguaging strategies and resources to support learners’ socioemotional wellbeing and language learning, but saw translanguaging as a temporary scaffold rather than a way to de-center the hegemony of English in curriculum and assessment. The findings provide implications for how teacher educators can foster TCs’ critical engagement with translanguaging to disrupt linguistic hierarchies and democratize the classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• critical multilingual language awareness
• multilingual learners
• pre-service teachers

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (435-2017-0216): J. Bale (PI), A. Gagné (co-PI), J. Kerekes (co-PI). We would also like to acknowledge and extend our gratitude to the graduate research assistants on the Supporting Multilingual Learners research team at OISE for the study reported in this paper: Katie Brubacher, Mama Adobea Nii Owoo, Yiran Zhang, and Elizabeth Jean Larson. Thank you to the teacher candidates who participated in this study. Finally, we wish to thank the peer reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ Multilingual learners are integrated into mainstream classrooms and receive support during regular lessons from the classroom teacher.

² Any school can join The Language Friendly School free of charge at https://languagefriendlyschool.org. To learn more about the benefits of becoming a Language Friendly School listen to Dr. Ellen-Rose Kambel and Dr. Emmanuelle Le Pichon Vorstman on Tan Huynh’s Teaching MLs Podcast (Episode 144 - https://empoweringlls.podbean.com/e/ep-144creating-language-friendly-school-wdr-kambel-dr-le-pinchon-vortsman/)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2017-0216].