The Effect of Pedagogical Translanguaging on Foundation Phase Classrooms in a South African Private School

ABSTRACT

Classrooms across the world are becoming more diverse, forcing mainstream teachers to accept responsibility for teaching second language (L2) learners. As a result, pedagogical translanguaging has come to the fore as a potential practice to help L2 learners perform academically. In South Africa pedagogical translanguaging had not previously been studied where teachers and learners do not share a linguistic repertoire. Through design-based research we aimed to determine the effect of pedagogical translanguaging in a private school's foundation phase (FP) classrooms. The results indicate that teachers use pedagogical translanguaging for symbolic, scaffolding, and epistemological functions. While no direct academic benefit was observed for the L2 learners, their classroom participation and confidence improved because of the symbolic function of pedagogical translanguaging. The teachers deemed pedagogical translanguaging appropriate to their context. However, the monolingual mindset proved to be pervasive, despite participation in the study. Work needs to be done at all levels of the education system if we are to use multilingual practices to harness the abilities of all our learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Design-based research
• foundation phase
• L2 learners
• linguistic repertoire
• pedagogical translanguaging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation [AOJ114].

Notes on contributors

Joanne Christine Schoeman

Joanne Schoeman obtained her Master’s degree in 2016, and is currently researching for her PhD in Speech-Language Pathology, with a focus on the support of second language learners and their teachers. She works in private practice as a paediatric speech-language therapist, with a special interest in language acquisition for academic purposes.

Salomé Geertsema

Salomé Geertsema completed her PhD in Motor Learning Principles and Speech Sound Disorders in 2016. She has publications on this subject, language, and literacy development in English second-language speakers, and Specific Learning Disorder (Developmental Dyslexia), which are her main areas of interest. She is a rated researcher and senior lecturer from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Mia le Roux

Mia le Roux completed her DPhil Linguistics in acoustic phonetics, English second language learning, and literacy acquisition in 2016. She has publications on these subjects which are her main area of interest, as well as on language acquisition, Specific Learning Disorder (Developmental Dyslexia) and dysfluency. She is a rated researcher and senior lecturer from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Lidia Pottas

Lidia Pottas is a dually qualified speech-language therapist and audiologist with a specific interest in auditory processing disorders and providing support to learners and teachers within the educational context. She has several publications in this regard and is an associate professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.