Translenguaje y El Arte en Unión: fostering pre-service teachers’ languaging and multiliteracies through bilingual community art gallery lessons

Abstract

We present an analysis of bilingual pre-service teachers’ translanguaging practices when co-teaching bilingual art gallery lessons as a field experience in a Spanish/English bilingual/bicultural teacher education program. Using a critical bilingual literacies approach, we posed an opportunity for bilingual/bicultural pre-service teachers to be positioned as cultural and linguistic experts. We found how using art objects as mediators of translanguaging in bilingual art gallery lessons has the potential to promote cross-linguistic metalinguistic awareness, develop a sense of identity investment and positionality, and encourage interrogation of linguistic inequality. We offer implications for the inclusion of arts and translanguaging in multiple disciplinary areas.

Keywords:

• Translanguaging
• art
• co-teaching
• bilingualism
• biliteracy
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.