Education Commons^™

Mother Tongue, Please!, Anannya Chakraborty

Teacher India

There is sufficient research to show that mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) can help improve learning levels of students. Anannya Chakraborty discusses the key role of teachers in driving MTB-MLE and the systemic challenges of successfully engaging teachers in such programmes.

Cruzar Fronteras Em Espaços Acadêmicos: Transgressing “The Limits Of Translanguaging”, Brendan H. O’Connor, Katherine S. Mortimer, Lesley Bartlett, María Teresa De La Piedra, Ana Maria Rabelo Gomes, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Gabriela Novaro, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Char Ullman

Publications and Research

Scholarship on translanguaging and related concepts has challenged traditional assumptions about how people use their multiple languages, urging us to move beyond the boundaries of named linguistic codes and toward conceptualizations of multilingual language use as flexible use of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire. Critiques of this theoretical shift have included assertions of translanguaging’s conceptual and practical limits—limits to its transformative potential as well as limits to its practical use. This paper takes up, in particular, the question of why we academics may assert the value of translanguaging in schools and communities while still largely failing to move beyond monoglossic …

Celebrating Linguistic Diversity: Learner Languages As A Resource For Growth, Amy Lightfoot

Teacher India

Many classrooms across the globe have learners coming from different language backgrounds. This article discusses multilingual approaches that teachers can use within the classroom.

“…4542 Miles From Home…”: Repositioning English Language Learners As Power Brokers And Teachers As Learners In The Study Abroad Context, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Michaela P. Stone, Roberto Mora Mella, Francisco Olave Henriquez, Macarena Yacoman Palma

Teaching and Learning Faculty Research

This article provides an empirical context for the role that bi/multi-lingual children and families may play in supporting pre-service and in-service educators engaging difference through a literacy and language situated study abroad internship in Chile. Drawing on data over a 15-year longitudinal study of the program, the authors examine how students and parents navigate serving the role of teacher, whereas the teacher participants navigate a new role as a learner in a context where they, many for the first time, experience being language and cultural minorities.

Encouraging Languages Other Than English In First-Year Writing Courses: Experiences From Linguistically Diverse Writers, Alyssa G. Cavazos

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

First-Year Writing (fyw) courses are ideal writing spaces where students' diverse identities and language resources can flourish for specific rhetorical purposes. While research has focused on multilingual students' language and writing practices, little attention has focused on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of language difference in fyw. Because fyw courses are an integral space in students' writing experiences and an ideal place to counter English-only ideologies, this article focuses on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of how they negotiate language practices in academic contexts in higher education and how they perceive the role of languages other than English in fyw. Self-identified multilingual …

Creating A New Normal: Language Education For All, Aleidine J. Moeller, Martha G. Abbott

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Challenge: Language educators play a significant role as agents of change both within our classrooms and beyond. How can we position languages and help policy-makers and administrators at the local, state, and national levels to value multilingualism and multiculturalism as an integral and essential part of every learner’s education? What will that “new normal” look like?

Abstract: How close are we to the reality of all students having the opportunity to learn another language and gaining support for these efforts from the general public? The answer has a long history, which we point out by referencing articles that span the …

Creating A New Normal: Language Education For All, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Martha G. Abbott

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

How close are we to the reality of all students having the opportunity to learn another language and gaining support for these efforts from the general public? The answer has a long history, which we point out by referencing articles that span the 50‐year history of Foreign Language Annals. From the 1979 President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies report under President Jimmy Carter to the recent article by Kroll and Dussias (2017) on the benefits of multilingualism, this article tracks ACTFL’s advocacy efforts over the years. Most recently, the 2017 launch of the Lead with Languages public awareness …

Translanguaging, Sara Vogel, Ofelia García

Publications and Research

Translanguaging is a theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. Translanguaging also represents an approach to language pedagogy that affirms and leverages students’ diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning.

Multilingual Literacies: Invisible Representation Of Literacy In A Rural Classroom, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In many countries, educational policies typically mandate school activities that promote a homogeneous and narrow range of academic literacies for all learners despite the diverse nature of human learning. This ethnographic case study examines how a 12-year-old Kenyan fourth-grade student performing below average on all standardized tests used multiple invisible literacies while documenting his knowledge and life experiences in a rural context. Invisible literacies are covert meaning- making literacy practices that are not privileged in the classroom. Examination of these practices shows a convergence between school and home literacies, suggesting a need for education stakeholders to identify literacies that are …

Translanguaging: Definitions, Implications, And Further Needs In Burgeoning Inquiry, Luis E. Poza

Faculty Publications

The term translanguaging has appeared with growing frequency in research about the education of linguistic minority students. Amid increasing application of the term, concern emerges regarding the consistency of its definitions and characterizations, specifically with respect to the term’s social justice implications, which risk dilution. Early instances (García, 2007, 2009a) position the term as both a pedagogical strategy for supporting multilingual learners and a critique of existing conceptualizations of language and bilingualism that have historically marginalized particular speech communities. In this review of recent literature, I analyze 53 texts published between 1996 and 2014 for their definitions, exemplifications, and attributed …

Ii International Colloquium On Languages, Cultures, Identity, In School And Society, International Colloquium

Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Languages, Cultures, Identity in School and Society

The influx of immigrants in countries worldwide, coupled with the challenges associated to the schooling of their children in host countries' schools, makes it more necessary than ever to broaden our knowledge of the linguistic, ethnic, and cultural realities derived from this phenomenon. This is the rationale for the present Colloquium, which revolves around the following topics:

• Individual, school, and societal bilingualism/multilingualism-related issues
• Multi/Transculturalism-related issues in families, schools, and society
• Impact of bi/multilingualism on individuals' and societies' language, culture, and identity
• Impact of multi/transculturalism on individuals' and societies' language, culture, and identity
• Language ideologies, policies, and practices
• Promotion, maintenance, and …

Who’S Afraid Of Multilingual Education?, Amir Kalan

English Faculty Publications

More than 70 languages are spoken in contemporary Iran, yet all governmental correspondence and educational textbooks must be written in Farsi. To date, the Iranian mother tongue debate has remained far from the international scholarly exchanges of ideas about multilingual education. Using conversations with Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Jim Cummins, Ajit Mohanty, and Stephen Bahry, prominent academic experts in linguistic human rights, mother tongue education and bilingual and multilingual education, this book bridges that gap. The author examines the arguments for rejecting multilingual education in Iran, and the four interviewees counter those arguments with evidence that mother tongue-based education has resulted in …

"Sometimes The Perspective Changes": Reflections On A Photography Workshop With Multicultural Students In Italy, Robin L. Danzak

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

This article describes and evaluates an 8-week photography workshop, FotoLab, conducted in Italy at an afterschool-tutoring program for students acquiring Italian as an additional language. Seventeen students, age 8-17 and originating from 9 countries, participated. Co-facilitated by three international educator-researchers, FotoLab's purpose was to promote self-expression, collaboration, and visual literacy. Through a qualitative inquiry of the FotoLab curriculum, photographs and videos, field notes, and student questionnaires, this article reflects on themes of multiculturalism and multilingualism, collaboration, and visual literacy within a sociocultural animation framework. While expressions of cultural and linguistic identity emerged, findings emphasize the challenges and benefits of teamwork …

Short Report: Raising Children Bilingually, Henriette Langdon

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to describe the process of becoming bilingual by sharing my own experience being raised in a four-language environment and how it influenced the upbringing of my daughter in two, and subsequently three languages. The other purpose is to dispel the myth that children with language, developmental and/or intellectual impairments or those diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum cannot or should not be exposed to two languages because it is confusing, or because they simply cannot handle two languages due to their disability. As a bilingual speech and language pathologist (SLP) who has practiced …

Interpreter-Assisted Speech-Language Intervention In Poland: Needs, Possibilities And Prospects (Współpraca Polskiego Logopedy Z Tłumaczem – Potrzeby, Możliwości I Perspektywy), Katarzyna Gaweł, Henriette Langdon, Katarzyna Węsierska

Faculty Publications

Due to the constantly evolving global demographic situation, speech-language therapists (SLTs, also: speech-language pathologists – SLPs) have to deal with an increasing workload of bilingual/multilingual clients. This article presents results of a survey conducted among Polish SLTs aimed at investigating their views with regards to the possibility of collaboration with an interpreter during therapeutic intervention. The original version of the questionnaire (Gaweł & Węsierska, 2014) used in this survey was filled out by 206 respondents from different areas across Poland. The following issues were addressed in the study: the SLTs’ views on the incidence of bilingualism in Poland, their self-evaluation …

Teaching Mathematics In Multilingual Classrooms, Anjum Halai

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.