Monolingual Momentum: The Limits of Critical Language Awareness in a Hybrid Science Learning Environment

ABSTRACT

Among inequities faced by multilingual learners, engagement in science education is one of the most persistent. Research suggests leveraging students’ full multilingual repertoires in science education can help address this gap. However, pervasive monolingual norms in schooling may impede multilingual engagement, impacting students’ multilingual identities and self-perceptions as science learners. Using observations and classroom artifacts from four seventh-grade life science classes in a linguistically diverse school district in the Southeastern United States, we documented one teacher’s attempts to engage students’ multilingual repertoires in science education during a four-week instructional unit. Our findings indicated student hesitancy to participate multilingually in science discourse. Using critical language awareness (CLA) as a lens, we draw connections between this reluctance and monolingual schooling norms that impact students’ multilingual identities and present challenges to implementing linguistically sustaining pedagogies in English-medium instructional environments. By focusing on engaging students’ multilingual repertoires in science education, these findings have the potential to advance research on teacher CLA—including its affordances and contextual limitations—in science education and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical language awareness
• emergent bilinguals
• English learners
• multilingual learners
• secondary science education

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexis A. Rutt

Alexis A. Rutt is an Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Mary Washington’s College of Education, where she teaches science education and TESOL methods courses to graduate and undergraduate students. Rutt’s research interests fall at the intersection of science and language education, with particular attention to preparing teachers to engage students from all linguistic and cultural backgrounds in rigorous, age-appropriate science instruction.

Chris K. Chang-Bacon

Chris K. Chang-Bacon is Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development. His research explores equity in multilingual and multicultural contexts. As a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, South Korea, and Morocco, Chang-Bacon’s scholarship is informed by the dynamic language practices young people bring to classrooms.