Cultivating a critical translanguaging space in dual language bilingual education

ABSTRACT

An area of ongoing debate among bilingual scholars and practitioners is the extent to which instructional languages should be separated in dual language bilingual education (DLBE). This article contributes to and extends this effort by proposing critical translanguaging space as a conceptual lens to guide the design of translanguaging pedagogies in DLBE programs. This concept is grounded in spatial understandings of languaging and learning and comprised of three interrelated dimensions: (1) dynamic languaging, (2) heteroglossic ideologies, and (3) critical consciousness. After outlining these central tenets, I concretize this approach through a case study of a researcher-practitioner collaboration aimed at fostering a dynamic languaging space in a DLBE classroom that had previously enforced strict language separation. Findings reveal the ways in which this project reflected the aims of a critical translanguaging space, including by affirming students’ dynamic bilingual repertoires and identities, reframing linguistic expertise, fostering practice-based understandings of bilingualism, and creating opportunities for interrogating issues of equity. At the same time, the project fell short of cultivating students’ critical consciousness, as critical inquiry was largely relegated to students’ small group conversations. I conclude with a discussion of findings and implications for future efforts at fostering critical and flexible bilingual learning spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• bilingual education
• critical consciousness

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Maestra Carmen and her second grade students for welcoming me into their classroom and for being willing to engage in this translanguaging experiment with me. It was truly an honor to be a part of your classroom community. I also want to thank all those who provided feedback on this manuscript at various stages, including Maggie Hawkins, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Ofelia García, Deb Palmer, Giselle Martinez Negrette, and Patricia Venegas Weber. This manuscript is greatly improved thanks to your insightful comments and critiques. Finally, I want to thank my partner Michael Ortiz for reading multiple iterations of this manuscript and for always being a source of love and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This and all names of people and places are pseudonyms.

² The use of * denotes nonstandard usage or error.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Research Foundation (TIRF) for English Language Education Doctoral Dissertation Grant; Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship; Language Learning Dissertation Grant; National Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Association / Modern Language Journal Dissertation Award.