Multilingual practices of translanguaging-fluid, complex, and dynamic processes of using one's complete linguistic repertoire-have been increasingly embraced by researchers and educators in bilingual education. Applying this perspective within the field of assessment has proven more challenging. In this project, we explore the role of multilingualism in teaching and classroom assessment design and practice, drawing upon the concept of translanguaging as a lens through which to explore the perceptions and practices of teachers. Working from assumptions that multilingualism in classrooms is an important tool to enhance the learning of linguistic minority students, we examined how teachers perceive and practice translanguaging in classroom language assessments through an action research case study with 40 language teachers in the linguistically and culturally diverse state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Their reflections ranged from the pressure to train students to produce monolingual-like language in order to pass international standardized tests to the potential to validate students' linguistic repertoires and multicultural identities through increased use of translanguaging. Our analysis of this action research study and discussion of the potentials and limitations of translanguaging in teaching and assessments aims to contribute to the development of more equitable and effective multilingual education environments in the future.
Indigenous languages of Mexico have largely been excluded from formal education spaces. This ethnographic action research study highlights a context where Diidxazá/ Isthmus Zapotec, an Indigenous language of Oaxaca, has recently begun to be taught in Higher education. We examine the ways that administrators, the teacher, and students in these classes have collaborated to create a new space within the institution. By tracing the power dynamics behind the implementational and ideological efforts that have made this possible, we aim to provide insight into the social change underway in this setting, as well as the concrete steps taken in the creation of this pluralist space for Indigenous language learning. We conclude with discussion of the collective engagement that has been necessary in order to foster and develop a community of Indigenous-language learners, and the challenge of going beyond tokenistic inclusion of minoritised languages in education.
Minority language education initiatives often aim to resist dominant language regimes and to raise the social status of migrant or autochthonous minorities. We consider how participating children experience these alternative language regimes by analysing drawings made by children in two minority education settings—a Slovene‐German bilingual school in Austria and an Isthmus Zapotec (Indigenous) language and art workshop in Mexico. We examine how children's drawings represent language regimes in the social spaces they inhabit. Considering these drawings in relation to ethnographic observations and interviews with educators, we illustrate differences between how the social spaces are planned by educators and how they are represented and experienced by learners. Generally speaking, the children in our studies depict flexible, multilingual experiences and spaces, in contrast to the educators’ agendas of separating or emphasizing languages for pedagogical purposes. Mexican children's perception of themselves as participants in fluid language regimes, and Austrian children's increasing appropriation of multilingual space over time through both (school‐like) routines and (fun) exceptions can inform the efforts of minority language educators.
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