Re-examining teacher translanguaging: An ecological perspective

ABSTRACT

A growing body of recent scholarship has demonstrated that translanguaging is a natural and characteristic practice of bilinguals that also has great promise as a pedagogical tool. This ethnographic study examines the use of translanguaging by two teachers in a suburban high school ESL program. There, teacher translanguaging played an important role in increasing students’ participation and access to class content and yet did not achieve the interpersonal and emancipatory ends that have been reported elsewhere. Using an ecological approach, the author investigates this contradiction, mapping how teacher translanguaging fit in with other pedagogies, language policies, ideologies, and interpersonal relationships. The analysis suggests that the pedagogical and interpersonal potential of translanguaging may only be fully realized when connected to other practices in and beyond the classroom that affirm and support bilingualism and bilingual learners.

Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks to all the students, teachers, and staff at MHS who shared their experiences with me as well to colleagues and friends, the BRJ editorial team, and anonymous reviewers who commented on earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation’s Predoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Literacy.

Notes

1. While the term emergent bilingual was introduced primarily as a replacement for English language learners and highlights the bilingual potential of school-age, language-minority children (García, Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008), I use the term here to refer more broadly to any person in the early stages of becoming bilingual, regardless of age or whether they are studying another language. In this context, this includes the language-majority teachers and the language-minority students who are positioned at opposite ends of the English-Spanish continuum of bilingualism.

2. Recent theoretical and empirical work on dynamic bilingualism and translanguaging by Ofelia García and others has marked an important shift in the way educational linguists conceptualize bilingual language practices. Rather than understanding bilinguals as selecting or alternating between distinct codes (or named languages), translanguaging theorists posit a single linguistic repertoire from which bilinguals select features that have been socially constructed as belonging to different languages. See reviews of related work and the implications of this shift in Lewis et al. (2012) and Palmer et al. (2014).

3. All names of places and people are pseudonyms.

4. Though I recorded the field note primarily in English, the conversation occurred entirely in Spanish.

5. All interviews with students, including this one, were conducted in Spanish and translated by the author. Words in parentheses represent my best guess at unclear moments in the recording.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation’s Predoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Literacy.

Notes on contributors

Elaine C. Allard

Elaine C. Allard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.