Challenging the ‘Dual’: designing translanguaging spaces in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education program

Abstract

ABSTRACT In response to a growing call for developing flexible, multilingual spaces in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, this paper explored how [Sánchez, M. T., O. García, and C. Solorza. 2018. “Reframing Language Allocation Policy in Dual Language Bilingual Education.” Bilingual Research Journal 41 (1): 37–51.] translanguaging allocation policy could be strategically and purposefully implemented in a Grade 3 Mandarin classroom in a U.S. Mandarin-English DLBE program where the majority of the students were English-dominant speakers. Taking the form of participatory design research [Bang, M., and S. Vossoughi. 2016. “Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice: Studying Learning and Relations Within Social Change Making.” Cognition and Instruction 34 (3): 173–193.], I (as a researcher) and a Mandarin teacher worked together to co-design translanguaging spaces within and across three content areas: Chinese Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Data collection included classroom and design meeting recordings, observational field notes, and teacher and students’ artefacts and interviews throughout one whole school year. Inductive and deductive coding were adopted for data analysis. Findings revealed that it was a balancing act to create translanguaging spaces while maintaining the language-minoritized space and privileging students’ use of Mandarin. Translanguaging spaces took many shapes based on contextual factors such as different learning objectives and curricular demands of each content area. Students were able to demonstrate a fuller picture of their academic performance, develop deeper content understandings, build cross-linguistic connections, and become more aware of their bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural identities.