Embedding Multilingualism in Undergraduate Courses: A Need for Heteroglossia in US TESOL Teacher Preparation Programs

Abstract

Despite the increased acknowledgment of multilingualism in the United States, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education courses remain non-inclusive of many languages spoken by multilingual learners (MLs). Instead, they focus mainly on the study of the English language system. Neglecting to support MLs’ heritage languages (HLs) inadvertently reinforces prevalent monolingual ideologies and marginalizes MLs in classrooms (Barros et al., Journal of Language, Identity & Education 20:239–254, 2020; Flores, N., & Aneja, G. (2017). “Why needs hiding?” Translingual (re)orientations in TESOL teacher education. Research in the Teaching of English, 51(4), 441–463. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44821275 ; Tian, Z. (2020). Faculty first: Promoting translanguaging in TESOL teacher education. In S. M. C. Lau & S. Van Viegen (Eds.), Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and creative endeavors for equitable language in education (pp. 215–236). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36983-5_10). Translanguaging pedagogy with its heteroglossic approach creates a language ecology in which all students enrich teaching and learning experiences with more democratic approaches (Deroo and Ponzio, Bilingual Research Journal 42:214–231, 2019; Khote and Tian, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 5:5–28, 2019); however, both teachers and teacher educators know little about how to integrate translanguaging pedagogy into their coursework. In this case study, drawing upon (Bakhtin, M. (1981). Dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.) heteroglossia, we explore how pre-service teachers (PSTs) responded to translanguaging pedagogy in a TESOL education course. Data were collected through course assignments and interviews with 11 PSTs. Findings showed that PSTs embraced translanguaging in multiple ways that reflected heteroglossic perspectives in education. First, PSTs operationalized translanguaging as translations used to teach language and content lessons. Second, they took an active role in preparing lessons. Third, they understood translanguaging as a classroom ecology. While PSTs recognized the benefits of translanguaging for MLs, they also struggled with the translanguaging pedagogy because they could not imagine the full potential of translanguaging for themselves and their students. This study has implications for teacher educators, curriculum developers, and language teachers who grapple with bringing multilingualism to the center of TESOL that has traditionally privileged English-only.