Tensions and potentials of translanguaging in online spaces

Abstract

While dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programmes in the United States aim at cultivating pedagogical practices that support bilingualism and biliteracy development, they often idealise instructional models that separate languages within instruction and create educational spaces that privilege monolingual English-language proficiency standards. Scholars have called on schools to focus on the learning needs of language-minoritised learners through pedagogies that build upon the bilingual resources from language-minoritised learners and educators. One approach is adopting translanguaging pedagogies that promote flexible, hybrid, fluid languaging practices and advance social justice agendas in classrooms, ensuring that all students are educated deeply and justly. With the transition to and expansion of online teacher education programmes, it is critical to explore how teacher educators support teachers’ beliefs regarding translanguaging in online spaces. This self-study aimed to investigate our efforts as teacher educators to include translanguaging pedagogies as both a way to model practices and a conceptual framework for supporting in-service teachers to understand languages and language learning at a deeper level by exploring the guiding question: How has translanguaging (planned and unplanned) been part of online DLBE teacher education learning spaces? Using a narrative inquiry analysis based on teacher educators’ individual journals and critical friend group discussions, we explored both the tensions and potentials in online teaching and teacher education spaces based on our experiences.