The role of translanguaging in establishing school belonging for emergent multilinguals

ABSTRACT

Bilingual education can promote a sense of school belonging for students through a shared valuing of students’ home languages and cultures. This article explores how bilingual education contributes to sense of belonging for students who have more than one home language and are becoming trilingual in school. This qualitative study examines how a bilingual teacher’s instructional practices and use of translanguaging contributed to the experiences of belonging for students of Guatemalan descent who came from homes where Q’anjob’al and Spanish were spoken. Data was collected in a first-grade Spanish/English bilingual classroom through participant observation, interviews, and artifacts. Data analysis indicated that Maya students utilised questioning strategies to form meaning and establish understanding. Through translanguaging the students were able to engage as active members of the classroom and develop their content knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• inclusion
• bilingual education
• Q’anjob’al
• translanguaging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Christina P. DeNicolo is an Associate Professor of Bilingual and Bicultural Education. Her research examines the ways sociopolitical contexts shape the implementation of bilingual education programs and what this means for learning. She also explores how students' cultural and linguistic knowledge is accessed for learning through instructional methods and pedagogical tools.

Notes

1 I use the inclusive and non-binary term Latinx to denote Latin American origin or ancestry, however when referring to scholarly literature I maintain the terminology used by the authors.