Navigating Hybridized Language Learning Spaces Through Translanguaging Pedagogy: Dual Language Preschool Teachers’ Languaging Practices in Support of Emergent Bilingual Children’s Performance of Academic Discourse

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in early bilingual development and the unique role of the educational setting's language policy in this development. In this article, we describe how one dual language preschool teacher, in partnership with two co-teachers, navigated the tensions between language separation ideology and its practical realization in early bilingual education by co-constructing and enacting flexible bilingual pedagogic practices in support of Spanish-English emergent bilingual children's participation in language and literary activities and performance of academic discourse. Teachers' translanguaging practices of code-switching, translation, bilingual recasting, and language brokering drew on children's linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge, supported experimentation with new language forms, and integrated various languages and language varieties, while recognizing, validating, and expressing their shared bilingual identities.

«Man blir lite osäker på om man gör rätt» – En studie om pedagogers arbete med flerspråkighet i förskolan

“…Idag ses flerspråkighet som en tillgång (ex. Garrity, Aquino-Sterling & Day, 2015;Gort & Sembiante, 2015;Strazer, 2018). Genom att barns flerspråkighet stimuleras kan språkutveckling och skolresultat förbättras vilket skiljer sig från en tidigare syn på flerspråkighet där språken sågs konkurrera med varandra (Walk mfl., 2015).…”

Preschool teachers’ language and literacy practices with dual language learners

“…Buysse and colleagues (2010) found that even in situations where monolingual English-speaking teachers provide moderate quality instructional language and literacy practices, they use very few linguistically responsive practices to support DLLs. Gort and colleagues (2012, 2015) have examined the way in which preschool Spanish-English bilingual teachers use both languages with DLLs. For instance, during read-alouds, teachers ask differing types of questions when they read in Spanish versus English (Gort, Pontier, & Sembiante, 2012).…”

A Language-Based Approach to Content Instruction (LACI) for English Language Learners: Examples from Two Elementary Teachers

“…Students' cultural and linguistic resources, or their "funds of knowledge" from home communities (Moll et al, 1992), are used to support academic learning as ELLs develop new resources to be able to participate in new situations, bridging home and school and enhancing opportunities for students to learn (Valenzuela, 1999). Teachers can draw on ELLs' bilingual repertoires as supports for culture (Martinez, Hikida, & Durán, 2015), as ELLs use their bilingual resources in classrooms as resources without artificial linguistic boundaries (Gort & Sembiante, 2015).…”