Multilingual Learners Research Articles

“If we could look at kids as a whole”: Teachers negotiating science of reading approaches with multilingual learners

ABSTRACT “Science of Reading” approaches are prevalent in U.S. schools, but have not adequately addressed cultural and contextual factors for teaching in bilingual programs. Using cases from three bilingual teachers, we explore how teachers negotiated their biliteracy instruction after their district implemented a Science of Reading approach based on the simple view of reading. Data included coursework and interviews and were analyzed iteratively. Findings from this study show how Science of Reading approaches developed teacher knowledge of English foundational skills. However, participants interrogated the direct application of a simple view of reading to Spanish literacy and questioned instructional practices designed from a monolingual view for application with multilinguals. Teachers leveraged supports in their contexts and their professional and personal expertise to adapt and enhance their instruction. Issues of equity and access were raised since not all teachers shared this prior knowledge or contextual supports. Study findings point to the need for fostering pedagogical clarity within cultural contexts, preparing educators for critical decision-making in literacy reform. We call for approaches that recognize the unique cultural and linguistic resources of multilingual learners and their teachers.

Multilingual high school learner/consultants’ perspectives on ELA and AP English courses: Enhancing bilingual development while learning about the UN online

ABSTRACT This action research project explored the experiences of high school Multilingual Learners in a developmental bilingual Spanish/English program using ATW (ActionThroughWords), an online language through content course about the United Nations. The course seeks to improve users’ academic English proficiency and enrich their knowledge. A volunteer bilingual teacher and her students (N = 28) participated in hybrid ELA and AP English classes for one semester each. Students took the role of learner-consultants, providing feedback on how to improve ATW from the perspectives of adolescents. The bilingual teacher’s reflections throughout the project offered insights regarding her students’ development and how best to incorporate ATW in her classes. Results based on observations, survey, and interview data indicated that participants were interested in the unit themes and flexibly used L1 resources and online tools to support learning. In their consultant roles, students in both classes were highly motivated and provided suggestions to improve the content and interactive functions of the website for multilingual teen users. AP students were able to function more independently, as their proficiency and content knowledge were relatively more advanced.

High Schools' Role in Promoting Equity for Multilingual Learners' Access to College

AbstractHigh school plays a pivotal role in preparing students for college. Accordingly, a large body of research examines how high schools shape general education students' postsecondary options. However, there is a dearth of research on high schools' role in promoting multilingual learners' (MLs) college access. MLs' educational experiences differ from those of other minoritized students because MLs are still developing English language proficiency while also learning academic content. It is thus important to examine high schools' role in shaping MLs' postsecondary pathways. Adopting a multisite qualitative case study approach and an ecology of equity framework, we compare the policies and practices of two Massachusetts public high schools that both successfully expanded MLs' postsecondary options but in different ways. We argue that expanding equity in MLs' college access looks very different depending on the context of schools and the socioeconomic circumstances and the immigration status of the students they serve. Sending many MLs to 4‐year colleges need not be the only measure of success; expanding MLs' awareness of other postsecondary options and helping them choose a path that is aligned with their goals is also a valid approach to equity.

From keywords to key embeddings – contrasting French and Swedish web registers using multilingual deep learning

Abstract The pervasiveness of the internet has given web language use a central role in society. However, the lack of multilingual corpora and scalable methods has led to the focus on English in web language research. To address this gap, the present paper sets itself in the register research tradition and explores French and Swedish web registers from a cross-linguistic angle. Methodologically we combine keyword analysis with multilingual deep learning, suggesting an approach that enables computational comparisons across languages. Specifically, we extract keywords for French and Swedish web registers, then associate the keywords with fastText word embeddings, and finally, cluster these key embeddings. The findings indicate that there are topical and functional clusters, and they are linguistically motivated and multilingual. The same clusters occur within the same registers in both languages pointing to shared topical and functional similarities – the registers are strikingly similar. The dissimilarities, in contrast, indicate that certain registers like Narrative blogs are to some extent different in French and Swedish. Moreover, grammatical specificities such as the location of adjectives explain some dissimilarities.

Developing Virtual Classroom Tours With Preservice Teachers: Integrating a Translanguaging Stance and Design

ABSTRACTThis article describes a project for a university course on teaching language and literacy through a translanguaging lens. Through this project, preservice teachers (PSTs) were invited to design a “Virtual Classroom Tour” for a new multilingual learner (ML). The resulting multilingual, multimodal classroom tours became reflections of PSTs' emerging translanguaging stances and enabled them make important connections between their beliefs and their future pedagogical decisions and practices.

Teacher acceptability of instructional supports in science for multilingual learners

Addressing language barriers during instruction is critical for improving content area learning and achievement within classrooms with students from different native language backgrounds. Although several instructional supports have been highlighted in the literature as helping to reduce language barriers, it is questionable whether teachers are likely to infuse them within their instruction. We applied a social validity framework in the administration of a teacher survey ( N = 376) and interview ( N = 9) to better understand United States (U.S.) elementary teachers’ perspectives on four instructional supports for English learners (ELs). Survey results indicated teachers tended to find all supports acceptable within a science instructional context but found visual supports more acceptable than incorporation of the students’ native language. Interview results shed light on the different goals and priorities teachers may have for ELs that may help to explain the varying acceptability of the four instructional supports addressed. Implications for school psychologists seeking to help improve outcomes for ELs through school-based consultation are provided.

Infusing Illinois Educator Preparation for the Education of Multilingual Learner

A longstanding opportunity gap persists between multilingual learners and their English proficient peers. This gap has been characterized as “a persistent and seemingly intractable educational problem” (Leider et al., 2021, p. 3). In response, this article outlines how a Midwestern educator preparation program has infused mainstream teacher preparation with the minimum content knowledge and pedagogical expertise necessary to meet the needs of multilingual learners. Curriculum infusion includes theoretical grounding, literacy instruction and assessment strategies, and field experiences nurturing culturally responsive dispositions. Implications for policy and practice are discussed, including integration of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards (Illinois State Board of Education, n.d.) and the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan (https://www.isbe.net/Documents/IL-Comp-Literacy-Plan-2024.pdf).

Responding to the Needs of Early Literacy Teachers: Designing Online Professional Development to Improve Writing Instruction for Multilingual Learners

AbstractWhile the population of multilingual learners (MLs) in the United States has grown rapidly in recent years, many teachers feel unprepared to teach them. The professional development (PD) teachers receive is often misaligned with their particular needs and experiences. This design-based research study examined the development and impact of online PD designed with teacher input to improve writing instruction for young MLs. Data were collected over twelve months from 25 teachers in six Southeastern U.S. school districts. Researchers evaluated the impact of the PD on teachers’ knowledge and self-efficacy for teaching writing to MLs. Findings highlight how teachers made instructional moves to support the linguistic assets of their students and shifted their beliefs toward more culturally responsive perspectives. These shifts were facilitated by the core PD elements of content focus, active learning, coherence, and duration. The study highlights a need for soliciting iterative feedback on PD from teachers themselves, revising PD based on ongoing feedback, and providing practical opportunities to apply new learning.

School Effectiveness, Equity, and Multilingual Learners: Examining the Status of Multilingual Learner Education Through School Accreditation

School Effectiveness, Equity, and Multilingual Learners: Examining the Status of Multilingual Learner Education Through School Accreditation

Enhancing the accessibility of chemistry assessments for multilingual learners: understanding challenging features in assessment items

Multilingual learners face significant challenges when navigating the linguistic complexities of chemistry assessments. This study, employing the Equitable Framework for Classroom Assessment, identified these specific challenging features in general chemistry assessment items on the topics of limiting reactant and percent yield. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with multilingual students, we discovered critical barriers to comprehension: lack of metacognitive support, complex vocabulary and syntax, dense text layout, and extraneous information. These findings emphasize the need to better understand and alleviate these types of linguistic features in assessment items to more accurately measure chemistry knowledge, rather than linguistic proficiency. By addressing these challenges, instructors can design more accessible assessment items for a diverse group of students. The results also offer valuable insights and practical guidance for writing equitable assessment items.

Shapeshifting in Social Spaces: Sociolinguistic Competence of Multilingual Learners

The study aims to determine the sociolinguistic competence level of the multilingual Grade 10 learners at Buhisan Night High School for the Academic Year 2024-2025. Terogo et al. (2018), stated that even though students have been shown to gain exceptional grades in English subjects, they fall short in sociolinguistic competence since it is not practiced more often in the Philippines. Thus, assessing sociolinguistic competence is important as well as addressing the low-level sociolinguistic competency of the learners through an action plan. A descriptive quantitative research method was used to determine the sociolinguistic competence level of the multilingual 48 student-respondents. The researcher adapted a TOIEC test and used a researcher-made questionnaire to assess the learners’ sociolinguistic competence. A weighted average mean was used to determine their proficiency and sociolinguistic competence level. Based on the results of the study, situational judgment got the highest rank while reading comprehension got the lowest rank in terms of the learners’ proficiency level. However, the study revealed that the respondents got a general weighted average of 15.83 which means that the respondents’ sociolinguistic competence level is under “Basic Sociolinguistic Competence” which is below the passing rate with a percentage of 58.63. The study recommends enhancing students’ sociolinguistic competence through the integration of sociolinguistic competence in language teaching through enhancement activities and exercises such as role-playing, dialogues and situational exercises, and future researchers may use the findings as a basis for future research or conduct related studies to enhance the sociolinguistic competence of Filipino multilingual learners.

Savviness of sixth graders: Student perspectives about translanguaging during science formative assessment

AbstractScience classroom assessment often requires multilingual learners to demonstrate ideas using only English‐language resources. These assessments can provide an incomplete picture of students' knowledge and limit subsequent learning opportunities. Increasingly, science teachers are incorporating translanguaging pedagogies in their instructional practices. Less is known about students' perspectives of translanguaging in science. In this manuscript, we employ equity‐as‐access and equity‐as‐transformation lenses to investigate multilingual learners' perspectives about translanguaging as a formative assessment practice. Data came from a larger participatory co‐design design study in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school in the Mountain West. We qualitatively analyzed 8 focus group interview transcripts with 13 sixth‐grade students from across 4 formative assessment cycles. Analysis was both inductive and deductive. Findings suggest that sixth graders have savvy, nuanced views about translanguaging that bridge equity‐as‐access and equity‐as‐transformation lenses. They saw translanguaging as both supporting their English language development and as an important practice to allow them to focus bilingually on their science ideas without translating everything into English. Additionally, they highlighted tensions associated with welcoming translanguaging in schools with de facto English‐only languaging norms. This study has implications for teachers, assessment designers, and researchers. Findings signal structural/policy changes needed to authentically center translanguaging as an equity‐oriented practice across science assessment systems.

Syrian refugee youths' science learning in a “dialogic” third space: Pushing boundaries in the Lebanese educational system through translanguaging

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore translanguaging space as a transformative third space, where alternative and competing discourses are celebrated and where science learning and the development of science's discourse and epistemic practices expand across overlapping boundaries (e.g., home, school, and community). The study focused on Syrian refugee youth adapting to learning science in English in the Lebanese multilingual educational system that esteems international languages (English or French) over Arabic. Our research questions included: (1) What translanguaging practices and functions emerge during a linguistically responsive life science unit designed for refugee multilingual learners? (2) How does a translanguaging space act as a third space for refugee learners to engage in meaning‐making and science practices and discourse around the topic of “respiration”? The study utilized a qualitative instrumental case‐study approach to generate data around refugee learners' languaging practices and their development of science understandings, practices, and discourse. We also engaged in participatory methodologies that challenge boundaries between researchers and participants. The data sources were 22 Zoom recordings, students' work, and participant‐generated feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyze transcripts and students' work while adhering to trustworthiness criteria. Our findings center translanguaging as a justice‐oriented pedagogy that enables a productive and “inviting” third space for refugee multilingual learners to make meaning of phenomena by bringing together and extending their semiotic and epistemic repertoires. Serving multi‐tiered functions, translanguaging fostered dialogic connections that affirmed students' “outside” social spaces as valuable resources for meaning‐making in science classrooms. The implications discuss design features that support a fluid and purposeful translanguaging third space for asset‐oriented science learning.

The role of demographic, linguistic and social-psychological factors in explaining plurilingual self-assessment of immigrant youth

ABSTRACT The current study investigates the predictive relationships among demographic (arrival age, gender, SES), linguistic (exposure, home languages), and social-psychological (attitude, motivation, parental aspirations) factors and immigrant students’ plurilingual self-assessment (SA). The sample includes 160 French-speaking immigrant youth drawn from 6 Israeli schools. Drawing on holistic views of multilingualism, the study utilises a unique plurilingual ‘can-do’ instrument for examining students’ SA in three languages: (1) French, the heritage language (2) Hebrew, the school language and (3) English taught as a foreign language. Questionnaires were administered to collect information about the factors under investigation. Hierarchical regression analyses reveal a differential pattern of prediction of SA in French, Hebrew and English respectively involving analogous background variables, notably current language use, and those playing a language-specific role, e.g. integrative orientation to learn French and Hebrew. Moreover, SA in Hebrew and English were found to be significantly related, implying that SA of additional languages is interdependent. The results highlight the role of the sociolinguistic context and the specificity of each language as a source of variation in multilingual learning among immigrant students besides individual characteristics. The results imply that immigrants’ perceived plurilingual repertoire along with context-specific variables must be taken into account in their instruction and assessment.

Multilingualism in metacognitive and self-regulation research: scoping review advocating for comprehensive representation of multilingual complexity

Metacognition and self-regulation play crucial roles in second language acquisition, but their roles in multilingual (L3+) contexts remain underexplored. This scoping review sought to examine how metacognition and self-regulation manifest in learning third or additional languages, particularly regarding how multilingualism was accounted for in the empirical research surrounding these constructs. Three inclusion criteria were: L3+ participants, variables related to metacognition and/or self-regulation, and empirical/experimental design. Studies on test or technology validations, or nonlanguage domains were omitted. A comprehensive search across three databases yielded 52 studies, which were analyzed to assess their exploration of multilingualism's impact on metacognitive and self-regulatory processes. Findings revealed that while these cognitive strategies are crucial for navigating complex linguistic environments, studies often conflated bilinguals with multilinguals, limiting insights into how varied linguistic repertoires influence metacognition and self-regulation. Future research must better differentiate between these groups and investigate how managing multiple languages fosters unique self-regulatory action in multilingual learners.

ENHANCING DIGITAL INCLUSION IN MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has significantly impacted teaching and learning in higher education worldwide. However, many developing countries have continued to face challenges in embracing digital transformation within their education systems. This study explored strategies to enhance digital inclusion through multilingual education, focusing on South Africa and the integration of technology into multilingual learning environments. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to understand how digital tools could be successfully incorporated into multilingual education to improve access and inclusion. A systematic review of relevant literature was conducted, drawing from databases such as Scopus and Google Scholar, focusing on studies published between 2020 and 2024. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes from 72 articles, published in English language and in peer-reviewed journals, which informed the findings and recommendations. The study aimed to offer practical strategies for improving digital literacy and inclusion in multilingual education, particularly in developing countries. The results provided valuable insights for policymakers, educators, and stakeholders, offering ways to promote equity and access to digital resources in multilingual learning environments.

Multicultural perspectives on building instructional capacity for multilingual learners: synergy of teachers, community members, and academics

ABSTRACT This design-based research study explored the feedback process, resulting actions, and changing instructional perspectives involving teachers, community members, and researchers leading to enhanced professional development offered to K-12 teachers of multilingual students. Specifically, the feedback from a community advisory council and teachers significantly shaped researchers’ approaches to designing and adapting a literacy course to address the needs of multilingual students’ caregivers. The findings underscore the importance of a holistic approach to professional development and highlight the multicultural perspectives that academics can discover by involving both community stakeholders and teachers in promoting impactful practices for multilingual learners.

Identifying Phonological Interference of Indonesian Multilingual Learners at Reading Test with Genre-Based Approach Perspective and AI Tool

The present study is succinct summary which aims to identify factors of phonological cross linguistic influence faced by students of secondary bilingual boarding school, an educational institution that utilizes English and Arabic as medium of instruction. The subjects of this research are cross-ethnic students with diverse linguistic backgrounds, including Indonesian, Javanese, Madurese, Sundanese, Arabic, and English as their first language (henceforth, L1) to fifth languages (henceforth, L5). This research adopted qualitative descriptive research design and employed a purposive sampling method. 23 Students were selected as informants for this research, representing 25% of the total social situation in eleventh grade. Content analysis, reading test, and interview were used as data collection techniques. The test analysis result conducted using AI tools (ELSA Speak application) to measure pronunciation errors, intonation, and fluency in English. The data analysis technique followed the steps proposed by Miles et al., (2014), which include the data collection, data reduction, data display, and conclusion. The findings of this research revealed that Phonological Cross Linguistic Influence is attributed to two primary factors, technical factors and fundamental factors. Technical factors consist of: (1) Differences in the sound system of the languages, (2) Similarity of sounds between two languages. On the other hand, fundamental factors comprise: (1) Student’s linguistic background, (2) Student’s motivation, (3) Language habits/ attitudes (lack of practice and intensity of native language usage), (4) Learning environment (teacher’s lack of creativity and learning’s lack of program evaluation). Furthermore, the result reading test of 23 participants (SLA: Indigenous, Indonesia, Arabic, and English) using ELSA Speak show 9 different phonological interference of 28 vowels /??/; /a?/; /æ/; /??/; /?/; /a?/; /??/; /?:/; /??/ which 65% for L3, and 75% for L4. While 5 consonant /?/; /?/; /ð/; /?/; /?/ which 78% for L3, and 92% for L4. This difficulty was faced due to grammatical limitation, structure in building conversation, and accuracy detection. Implication of this study for EFL Materials, English curriculum policy makers and educators to be aware and emphasizing vocabularies which need to be emphasized Indonesians’ learners.

Sähköiset kertomukset – tiedonalan kielen risteymiä fysiikan oppitunnilla

This article focuses on disciplinary language construction in lower secondary school physic lesson and especially on teacher’s narratives. The language practices of physics are materialized in both textual products and face-to-face interactions. For the language learner, mastering both a new language and the content of the subject at the same time can be challenging. Thus, the paper seeks to answer the following research questions: 1) What does disciplinary language look like from the perspective of the multilingual learner and 2) How is disciplinary language constructed in the intersection of practices? This nexus of practice is examined from classroom observations and video recordings. This article suggests that from the point of language education and social justice, it is important to consider the intersection of mundane and disciplinary practices.

Autoethnographic Journey of Academic Writers as Multilingual Learners in Neural Machine Translation: Human-AI Assistance or Flawed-AI Tool?

Autoethnographic Journey of Academic Writers as Multilingual Learners in Neural Machine Translation: Human-AI Assistance or Flawed-AI Tool?