Translanguaging and Education : New perspectives from the field

• The colloquium “Translanguaging and Education: New perspectives from the field” is comprised of recent research that is included in the forthcoming volume with the same name (Multilingual Matters). While studies of translanguaging in bilingual, immersion, heritage, and minority education have become more widespread in recent years, much of the current research centers on contexts in which one of the languages is English and the others are minority or heritage languages. This colloquium, however, contributes to an understanding of diversity in European schools, in which languages other than English are in focus. We include three of the eleven empirical studies in the volume from diverse European school settings (France, Belgium, and Sweden), allowing for an exploration of multilingual educational issues of today. With an aim to stimulate an active discussion on the notion of translanguaging as applied in current educational research, the emphasis will be on the possibilities the concept offers as both a theoretical lens for educational research and as a pedagogy in the classroom, as seen in the three papers. The first paper presents a study of how a French pre-school teacher creates safe spaces through translanguaging with emergent bilingual learners in a multilingual classroom of three- and four-year-old children. The second paper offers comparative case studies from two diverse elementary school classrooms in Belgium, with an investigation into how translanguaging practices may provide pedagogical scaffolding for learning. The third paper presents a comparative study of language practices in Swedish mother tongue instruction (state-funded teaching of minority languages) and the ideologies expressed by the mother tongue teachers, offering a discussion of pedagogical translanguaging. To conclude the colloquium, we will open the floor for a discussion of the applicability of the concept of translanguaging in educational research in diverse settings. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

pedagogik med inriktning mot utbildningsvetenskap

Educational Science

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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