Emergent practices in translingual pedagogy: Teachers learning to facilitate collaborative translation

Abstract

This dissertation examines how teachers learn to implement translingual pedagogy in a language arts classroom. I analyze data from a five-week professional development study in which three middle school teachers learned and enacted an approach to pedagogical translation called TRANSLATE. TRANSLATE is adapted from small group guided reading, and describes specific steps and flexible strategies for guiding students to collaboratively translate short passages from grade level texts to improve reading comprehension. Focusing on teacher reflections on teaching TRANSLATE, I first examine how teachers’ professional vision of translingual pedagogy led to changes in their practice of pedagogical translation. Teachers’ initial orientations on pedagogical translation were highly individualized; conditioned by their normative pedagogical routines, their histories of engagement with particular students, and their participation in other related practices, especially second language learning experiences. As translation routines stabilized, however, teachers’ professional vision of translingual pedagogy began to converge through opportunities provided within the professional development for collaborative discussion of the goals of the practice. Drawing on social practice theory and multimodal discourse analysis procedures, I then examine lesson transcripts and video to investigate how teacher participation in language problem solving events (LPSEs) facilitated students’ metalinguistic understanding and teacher learning. This analysis suggests that students’ tendency to make explicit metalinguistic connections during collaborative translation is facilitated by bodily and material arrangements that promote shared attention on texts, especially on alternative translation choices. It also describes power struggles that arise when students’ focus on communicating essential text information conflicts with teachers’ goal of exploring the meaning of unusual vocabulary. Finally, this study suggests teachers’ participation in LPSEs is more strategic and effective when translation is regarded as a tool to achieve curricular objectives, rather than an end in itself. This study contributes to research and practice in translingual pedagogy by expanding our understanding of how teachers learn to leverage student background knowledge toward pedagogical goals in multilingual classrooms.