Session Information
31 SES 02 C, Building Competence via Translanguaging
Paper Session
Contribution
European classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse and teacher education institutions struggle to prepare pre-service teachers for this increasingly complex reality (Hélot & Ó Laoire, 2011, pp. xii-xiii). Field placement has been recognized as an important context for pre-service teachers to acquire experience with culturally and linguistically diverse schools (Anderson & Stillman, 2013; Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; García & Kleyn, 2013; Kleyn, 2016). However, research indicates that field placement does not necessarily have an unanimously positive effect on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards culturally and linguistically diverse students (Anderson & Stillman, 2013). On the contrary, some studies have found that pre-service teachers through field placement can develop more negative attitudes towards teaching diverse students (Anderson & Stillman, 2013, p. 35).
This study investigates how pre-service teachers position themselves according to the hegemonic use of Norwegian as the only legitimate language for learning and teaching in field placement classrooms. The paper at hand presents new knowledge about how pre-service teachers engage with or refuse to engage with the linguistic diversity of their field placement classrooms and provides suggestions about what teacher educators need to consider when preparing pre-service teachers for field placement in linguistically diverse schools. By examining what pre-service teachers already do early on in their teacher education, it is possible to identify practices that can be developed into a more coherent pedagogy. Thus, this paper also contributes to the increasing research on the role of teacher education in developing new approaches to multilingual classrooms (e.g., Freeman & Freeman, 2014; García & Kleyn, 2013; Kleyn, 2016).
I apply the concept of translanguaging to describe the instances of multilingual practices that the pre-service teachers occasionally engage in during field placement. Translanguaging is delineated as “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages” (Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015, p. 281). Researchers have also proposed the term “translanguaging instinct” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 32; Wei, 2018, p. 24), understood as “an innate capacity to draw on as many different cognitive and semiotic resources as available to them to interpret meaning intentions and to design actions accordingly” (Wei, 2018, p. 24). This is a useful concept to describe the examples of pre-service teachers’ spontaneous translanguaging presented in this paper. Yet, García and Sylvan (2011, p. 398) caution that “without teachers who truly understand how to use students’ home language practices to make sense of new language practices and academic content, translanguaging could become random, not sense-making”. Hence, there is a need for strategic and planned use of translanguaging in schools; there is a need for pedagogical translanguaging.
Pedagogical translanguaging describes a practice that “embraces instructional strategies that integrate two or more languages” (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017, p. 904). In other words, pedagogical translanguaging includes “how teachers deliberately try to draw on their students’ multiple linguistic resources in pedagogy in order to promote and mediate learning” (Ganuza & Hedman, 2017, p. 201). Thus, pedagogical translanguaging describes a deliberate and planned use of several linguistic resources in order to enhance and facilitate learning. Teachers play a decisive part in creating space for translanguaging in the classroom , and therefore the institutions that educate future teachers have an essential role in promoting translanguaging as a pedagogical resource (García & Kleyn, 2013).
Method
In the current study, a combination of focus groups and classroom observation was employed. The participants (n=24) were recruited among pre-service teachers attending their first year of teacher education at two teacher education institutions in Norway. The participants took part in field placement at six different primary schools with a linguistically diverse student population. I chose focus groups due to the social nature of field placement. Teacher education, and particularly field placement activities, requires that the pre-service teachers “work together to solve problems of practice and improve student learning by engaging in ongoing inquiry and reflection” (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015, p. 113). Hence, field placement is at its core a social activity. During the focus groups, the pre-service teachers discussed the role of multilingualism in education and their own experiences from field placement. For instance, they were asked to describe the linguistic diversity of their classroom and reflect on how they had worked with multilingual students, as well as what guidance they had received to support multilingual students’ learning. I recorded and transcribed all of the focus groups. I selected one group of four pre-service teachers for observation. The particular school chosen for observation was a school where pre-service teachers had reported to experience great linguistic diversity and the pre-service teachers had made frequent reference to multilingual practices that they had engaged in during their field placement. I observed the group for one week. This resulted in the observation of 14 lessons. I followed the pre-service teacher throughout the day, both in and outside of the classroom. During lessons, I had a non-participant role, where I would usually sit at the back of the classroom taking field notes. My focus during the observations was on the pre-service teachers’ language use. The transcripts from the focus groups and the field notes were subsequently coded and analysed. I conducted a focused coding where the aim was to identify linguistic practices that either supported or disrupted the hegemonic use of Norwegian in the classroom. Hence, two main categories were applied in the coding: Practices that contributed to support the hegemonic use of Norwegian as the only legitimate language in the classroom and practices that disrupted this hegemony. I coded all instances of linguistic practices that involved other languages than Norwegian as disrupting the hegemony of Norwegian in the classroom.
Expected Outcomes
Based on the data obtained from focus groups and classroom observation, one can conclude that pre-service teachers in most situations support a hegemonic use of Norwegian for teaching and learning. This support is expressed through the almost exclusive use of Norwegian in all instruction and communication with students and by ignoring the linguistic diversity present in the classroom. For instance, three out of seven focus groups explicitly mentioned that since the students were sufficiently proficient in Norwegian, it was not necessary to consider the students’ diverse language backgrounds. However, some pre-service teachers spontaneously drew on their own linguistic repertoire in situations where Norwegian was no longer sufficient to establish and sustain communication with the students. The pre-service teachers usually drew on other high-status languages, such as English and Spanish, while only one pre-service teacher claimed to use two students’ home language in the classroom. I argue that the pre-service teachers’ spontaneous use of other languages within their linguistic repertoire suggest that translanguaging is an instinctive capacity for most pre-service teachers. Even without any preparation, the pre-service teachers are capable of drawing on other linguistic resources in order to secure communications with students with a limited proficiency in the language of instruction. Teacher education can contribute to enhance pre-service teachers’ linguistic awareness, provide knowledge about pedagogical translanguaging, and themselves approach teacher education based on a pedagogical translanguaging (García & Kleyn, 2013; Kleyn, 2016). Then, pre-service teachers’ instinctive translanguaging can be developed into pedagogical translanguaging. In future studies, I recommend to include an even larger sample of pre-service teachers. The current study has a limited sample of pre-service teachers and a limited number of lessons observed. Furthermore, it would be interesting to investigate more closely how pre-service teachers are prepared by teacher educators to work with multilingual learners in field placement.
References
Anderson, L. M., & Stillman, J. A. (2013). Student teaching's contribution to preservice teacher development: A review of research focused on the preparation of teachers for urban and high-needs contexts. Review of Educational Research, 83(1), 3-69. Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2017). Minority languages and sustainable translanguaging: threat or opportunity? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 38(10), 901-912. Cochran-Smith, M., Villegas, A. M., Abrams, L., Chavez-Moreno, L., Mills, T., & Stern, R. (2015). Critiquing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, part II. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 109-121. Freeman, Y., & Freeman, D. (2014). Research on preparing preservice teachers to work effectively with emergent bilinguals. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Ganuza, N., & Hedman, C. (2017). Ideology versus practice: Is there a space for pedagogical translanguaging in mother tongue instruction? In B. Paulsrud, J. Rosén, B. Straszer, & Å. Wedin (Eds.), New perspectives on translanguaging and education (pp. 208-225). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. García, O., & Kleyn, T. (2013). Teacher education for multilingual education. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing. García, O., & Sylvan, C. E. (2011). Pedagogies and practices in multilingual classrooms: Singularities and pluralities. The Modern Language Journal, 95(iii), 385-400. García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. New York, NY: Pelgrave Macmillan. Hélot, C., & Ó Laoire, M. (2011). Introduction: From language education policy to a pedagogy of the possible. In C. Hélot & M. Ó Laoire (Eds.), Language policy for the multilingual classroom: Pedagogy of the possible (pp. vi-xxv). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Kleyn, T. (2016). Setting the path: Implications for teachers and teacher education. In O. García & T. Kleyn (Eds.), Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments (pp. 202-220). New York, NY: Routledge. Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281-307. Wei, L. (2018). Linguistic (super)diversity, post-multilingualism and translanguaging moments. In A. Creese & A. Blackledge (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and superdiversity. London, UK: Routledge.
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