Pedagogical translanguaging and teachers’ perceptions of anxiety

ABSTRACT

The concept of translanguaging is widely used in studies on multilingualism and language learning nowadays and it is important to distinguish between spontaneous translanguaging and pedagogical translanguaging. Spontaneous translanguaging refers to the discursive practices of multilingual speakers that have not been planned by the teacher and which take place both at school and outside school. Pedagogical translanguaging refers to pedagogical strategies planned by the teacher inside the classroom. The aim of this article is to explore the possible relationship between pedagogical translanguaging and the perception of students’ and teachers’ levels of anxiety when teaching and learning through the medium of second and third languages. Participants in the study were 124 teachers who took an in-service course on pedagogical translanguaging. These teachers implemented pedagogical translanguaging activities in their classes. The participants completed a questionnaire and some open questions to report their views on their own level of anxiety and that of their students while implementing translanguaging. The results indicate that pedagogical translanguaging can be associated with a reduction in students’ anxiety and teachers’ guilt feeling about using more than one language in class. These results are discussed as related to monolingual and multilingual ideologies in language teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogical translanguaging
• anxiety
• multilingual education
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Spain [grant number PID2019-105818GB-100] and the Basque Government [Grant Number DREAM IT-1225-19].

Notes on contributors

Jasone Cenoz

Jasone Cenoz is Professor of Education at the University of the Basque Country Her research focuses on multilingual education, bilingualism and multilingualism. She has published extensively on these topics and has presented her work at conferences and seminars in many different countries.

Alaitz Santos

Alaitz Santos is an Assistant Lecturer at the department of Educational Science in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She has analyzed in depth the relationship between anxiety and multilingualism in different contexts. Her research interests include multilingual education, communicative anxiety and research methods in education.

Durk Gorter

Durk Gorter is Ikerbasque research professor at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. He is head of the Donostia Research group on Education And Multilingualism (DREAM). He carries out research on multilingual education, European minority languages and linguistic landscapes.