Teachers’ Translanguaging Ideologies and Practices at an International Branch Campus in Qatar

Abstract

While there has been a lot of recent research on teachers’ translanguaging practices in K-12 educational contexts, research on teachers’ translanguaging practices in higher education is sparse, and even more so within the contexts of internationalized higher education, such as found in the Arab states of the Gulf. Over the last two decades, there has been a rapid growth of international branch campuses (IBCs) offering English-medium degree programs in the Gulf. As these programs include bi- and multi/plurilingual teachers and students, they are a ripe setting for exploring translanguaging practices. Therefore, this study examines teachers’ translanguaging ideologies and practices at an American IBC in Qatar. Twenty-two bi- and multi/plurilingual faculty members and lab instructors completed a survey about translanguaging practices and a purposeful sampling of these instructors were video-recorded teaching their courses and then interviewed using stimulated-recall techniques. The results show that while instructors may report minimal mixing of languages in classrooms at this IBC due to different ideological tensions, in practice instructors still engage in translanguaging for various pedagogical purposes, both inside and outside of the classroom space. The study additionally sheds light on the complexities of the linguistic ecology of internationalized universities when it comes to translanguaging practices.