Multilingual Students Research Articles

In-Service Primary Teachers’ Practices and Beliefs About Multilingualism: Linguistically Sensitive Teaching in the Basque Autonomous Community

Summary European schools have seen a considerable increase in the number of multilingual students (Bergroth et al., 2021). Teaching languages separately restricts the use of students’ entire linguistic repertoire; however, new lines of research have pointed out the usefulness of multilingualism and the potential benefits of pedagogical translanguaging (Leonet et al., 2017). In this context, Linguistically Sensitive Teaching (LST) allows teachers to make multilingualism visible in their classrooms (Llompart & Birello, 2020). This qualitative research study was conducted in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), where Basque and Spanish are official languages. In most cases, English is taught as a Foreign Language. Even though the minority language is not the student’s first language in many cases, most students’ families choose Basque as the language of instruction (Basque Government, 2020). This study analyses in-service primary teachers’ perspectives on multilingual education in a government aided semiprivate school. Data were collected through linguistic landscape analysis, observations, and a focus group discussion. Two researchers observed one hundred six primary multilingual students and eight in-service language and content teachers for three weeks. Teachers who participated in the study were at least bilingual and fluent in Basque and Spanish and some (4) were also fluent in English (B2–C1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for languages). The findings reveal that in-service primary teachers are aware of the utility of putting LST into practice, and they are willing to teach and flexibly use languages. In addition, they believe in transferences across languages and highlight the value of using language to learn content. Although in many cases, multilingual strategies are appropriate for adapting to the current situation, those strategies are not systematized, creating a climate of insecurity. The results suggest the need for more linguistically sensitive education and training.

Designing Teaching for Transfer in English for Academic Purposes

Transfer of learning is an important goal of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) education where multilingual students learn knowledge and skills of academic literacy to use in other contexts of writing. Despite the importance of learning transfer in EAP, it does not often take place without mindful teaching for transfer. EAP teachers should make active efforts to help students shape the habit of transfer thinking and experience successful transfer while taking EAP courses. This action research aims at promoting learning transfer by designing and implementing pedagogical tools guided by the notion of high road transfer: (a) transfer guideline, (b) transfer feedback, (c) transfer journals, and (d) transfer imagination activity. The teaching for transfer innovation lasted over the 16-week semester in the target course where multilingual students, who use English as a second/foreign language, learned skills (e.g., how to design PowerPoint slides using different modes of communication, critical reading, source-use skills, synthesizing, finding sources, revising, editing, and reference style) and knowledge of writing (e.g., multimodality and rhetorical situation). Each pedagogical tool was implemented in the classroom so that students maintain their awareness of the importance of learning transfer while taking the target course. Overall, the teaching for the transfer project had positive impacts on articulating what students learn from the target course, leading to actual transfer of learning to other contexts of writing. Future pedagogical directions for promoting learning transfer in EAP are discussed.

The Interview-Event-Agencement as Creative Movement and Methodological Disruption

In her article “Towards a Politics of Immediation,” Erin Manning (2019a) writes about the process of “immediation, the withness of time, of body in the making” (p. 1) that bodies subjectivity through the interstitial experience of/in the event. Drawing from Manning’s movement-oriented philosophy, and thinking-with her concepts of immediation, agencement, interval, and memory of the future, I invite alternate visualizations of interviewing as a research method through my study with international graduate students in a TESOL program at a Canadian university. By shifting focus from human-centred researcher intentionality and pre-determined research tools of the interviewing method, to the entangled human and non-human affective agencies of the interview-participant-voice-recorder-assemblage, I offer possibilities for experiencing the interview-event as an affective ecological attunement. Manning’s concepts also create interferences with existing institutional and TESOL representations and discourses, where multilingual students are often interpellated into rigid identity constructions and difference is seen as deficiency.

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Literacies in Literacy Narratives

Although literacy narratives have been a popular assignment in college composition classrooms, the role of context and interaction in students’ writing and understanding of literacy is one of the least explored areas. This article reports the findings of a qualitative case study conducted in a regular first year composition class (English 101) of a public research university in the Southwest. The data is comprised of fifteen literacy narratives accompanied by reflective letters written by a group of English monolingual and bi- and multilingual students; transcripts of nine personal interviews; and twelve one-on-one conferences that were coded and analyzed using a combination of inductive, deductive, and literal or verbatim coding methods mostly informed by grounded theory. The findings show that a literacy narrative assignment in college writing can foster a complex understanding of literacies among student writers. When we adopt a translingual orientation to literacy, encourage cross-cultural conversations through various collaborative activities and diverse readings, and emphasize the role of little narratives to resist the master narrative of literacy, both English monolingual and bi- and multilingual students mutually enrich their understanding of literacies. In this process, the writing classroom becomes borderland and the instructor and students become border crossers.

L2 Students’ Adaptive Transfer Beyond First-Year Writing

Learning transfer with regard to academic literacy in higher education has drawn more and more researchers’ attention in recent years (Baik & Greig, 2009). However, only a small number of transfer studies are pertinent to international and multilingual students or second language (L2) writing instruction. Situated in the area of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), this research investigates international and multilingual undergraduate students’ writing practice and development within and across the disciplines. Specifically, it looks into six Chinese international students’ learning transfer from their First-Year Writing (FYW) course to disciplinary writing in the college years. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of adaptive transfer proposed by Depalma and Ringer (2011), this study redefines transfer in L2 writing and expands the research scope of transfer studies. It examines writing transfer from a new vantage point by including writers’ creative and/or strategic transformation of learned knowledge.
 Using the case study methodology, this research documents detailed processes of how international and multilingual undergraduate students adapt and transform prior writing knowledge and experiences to construct discipline-specific literacy. The findings have captured a series of writing practices cutting across those students’ approach to language, rhetoric, and genre and identified the factors that contextualize their writing practices.

Biliteracy Metaphor Analysis: Examining Multilingual, Multicultural Pupils’ Interpretation of Canon Literature

ABSTRACT This article unfolds and argues for Biliteracy Metaphor Analysis (BMA), a methodology for examining the interpretation and use of metaphors in canon literature in a biliteracy context, in this case the canon of Danish literature read and interpreted by multilingual students in a ninth grade classroom. BMA combines Spradley’s ethnographic framework with conceptual blending theory, Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope, and Hornberger’s continua of biliteracy. BMA seeks to guide researchers in examining the interpretive dialogue about Danish canon texts without favoring interpretations of familiar metaphors that only evoke literate trajectories matching the literacy experiences of Danish monolinguals. BMA invites researchers to also account for ways in which pupils critique, transform and expand the familiar Danish registers and already instantiated meaning potential by mapping and reframing metaphors differently and creatively. Applicability of the methodology will be analyzed, exemplified and discussed based on a contextual background consisting of monolingual, bilingual and multilingual pupils interpreting the inherent conceptual metaphors of chronotopes in texts by authors belonging to the canon of Danish literature. Examples from Kaasby’s previous Master’s thesis will be used to illustrate possible contributions of the methodology when analyzing literacy acquisition.

Linguistically responsive reciprocal teaching in primary school: effectiveness of an intervention study on students’ Reading competence

ABSTRACT One shared goal of classroom instruction is to support students’ reading competence as a key skill of school success and participation in daily life. Yet, teaching that addresses multilingual students’ language-related resources to support reading is rare. In this study, we enriched reciprocal teaching with elements of linguistically responsive teaching (labelled LRRT) and conducted an intervention study in German primary schools (38 classes and 684 students) to examine its effects on reading competence. To assess reading competence, we used reading comprehension and reading strategy tests. Findings demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in regular primary school classes. Teachers and students highly valued the teaching unit as well. Results of latent mean difference score analysis confirmed the effectiveness of LRRT with respect to students’ reading strategy use but not with respect to their reading comprehension. Moreover, multilingual and monolingual students did not differ in their gains in reading competence. However, multilingual students’ different language use was of particular importance for gains in reading comprehension. The study thus provides further research on multilingualism as well as various stimuli for teachers of today’s heterogenous primary school classes.

Vocabulary Learning Strategies in a Multilingual Academic Environment: Ιs Morphological Segmentation Quite Sustainable?

Τhis article contributes to the ongoing research on the importance of the strategy of morphological segmentation to vocabulary growth in foreign language learning. A total of 45 students of the department of Italian Language and Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) were to segment 21 Italian words—among which there were 6 pseudo-words—and write their meaning with the use of an e-questionnaire. In turn, 10 out of 45 students participated in a focus group discussion. Results reveal no correlation between morphological segmentation and understanding of the meaning of words, except in the case of pseudo-words that were completely unknown to the participants. During the focus group, students attempted to recognize the productive and transparent suffixes of the words and discover their contribution to the building and the meaning of them. Other languages, such as English—L2/first foreign language for the majority of the interviewed students—assisted multilingual students in retrieving the meaning of the words implementing translanguaging practices. The students’ responses show that they managed to segment the words correctly at a rate of 49.3%, while they understand their meaning due to their frequent use at a rate of 57.8%, without having been taught the morphology of L2.

Reimagining Science Lessons Through Translanguaging: Supporting Multilingual Students’ Scientific Sensemaking in the Context of Science and Engineering Practices

Reimagining Science Lessons Through Translanguaging: Supporting Multilingual Students’ Scientific Sensemaking in the Context of Science and Engineering Practices

Language attitudes: construct, measurement, and associations with language achievements

ABSTRACT The article reports on the development and validation of a new scale for assessing attitudes towards multiple languages among multilingual students from Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, China. The Language Attitudes Scale-Student Form (LASS) was developed based on relevant theory and literature as well as interview data from four students and four language teachers. The LASS consists of 40 items, with ten measuring students’ attitudes towards their dialect, ethnic (minority) language, Putonghua, and English, respectively. The LASS was validated among 5,237 students of seven schools from the elementary level to the tertiary level. The participants were mainly from Han (n 1 = 1,827) and two ethnic minority groups of Tujia (n 2 = 2,242) and Miao (n 3 = 886). The traditional triadic (cognition-affect-behaviour) model of language attitudes was generally supported across ethnic groups, languages, and educational levels. A series of validity tests and reliability tests were conducted, showing that the LASS was psychometrically sound. In addition, the predictive effects of language attitudes in self-perceived language proficiency and real language achievement were also confirmed to a large extent, highlighting the need to include language attitude as an important individual difference factor for language learning.

Designing for culturally responsive social robots: An application of a participatory framework.

Integrating cultural responsiveness into the educational setting is essential to the success of multilingual students. As social robots present the potential to support multilingual children, it is imperative that the design of social robot embodiments and interactions are culturally responsive. This paper summarizes the current literature on educational robots in culturally diverse settings. We argue the use of the Culturally Localized User Experience (CLUE) Framework is essential to ensure cultural responsiveness in HRI design. We present three case studies illustrating the CLUE framework as a social robot design approach. The results of these studies suggest co-design provides multicultural learners an accessible, nonverbal context through which to provide design requirements and preferences. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of key stakeholders (students, parents, and teachers) as essential to ensure a culturally responsive robot. Finally, we reflect on our own work with culturally and linguistically diverse learners and propose three guiding principles for successfully engaging diverse learners as valuable cultural informants to ensure the future success of educational robots.

Rethinking Translingualism in College Composition Classrooms: A Digital Ethnographic Study of Multilingual Students’ Written Communication Across Contexts

It is important to understand multilingual students’ lived experiences and sense-making in their everyday written communication before rethinking the implementation of translingual writing in college composition classrooms. Unpacking multilinguals’ written communication across social and academic contexts, this exploratory qualitative study integrates digital ethnographic and interview methods to examine the first-semester communication experiences of 10 undergraduate students. The findings indicate that while participants engaged in translingual written communication as part of their lived experiences in social contexts, they were reluctant to draw upon their home language in academic settings. Based on the findings, I discuss the pedagogical implications of supporting multilingual students in college composition classrooms. I argue that instructors must reposition themselves as co-learners together with their multilingual students to enact a translingual stance in academic settings and reimagine meaningful written communication beyond English-only. This study sheds light on rethinking the pedagogical practices around implementing translingualism in college composition.

A teacher’s positioning of a multilingual learner in the first month of the academic year

ABSTRACT Positioning theory [van Langenhove and Harré (1999). Introducing positioning theory. In R. Harre, & L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action (pp. 14–31). Blackwell Publishers] provides a useful analytical lens to examine how teachers’ positioning in moment-to-moment interactions can expand or restrict opportunities for multilingual learners to participate in mathematical discussions and develop robust mathematical identities. In this study, I examined the discursive practices of one white, third-grade monolingual teacher, Keri, and the ways she interactively positioned Alexia, a Latina multilingual learner, in the first full month of the academic year during whole class interactions. Findings demonstrate Keri used a range of positioning acts to recursively position Alexia as a communicator of mathematics and mathematical thinker that simultaneously situated Alexia within the broader classroom storyline that successful mathematics students communicate their ideas to others. The findings confirm that monolingual teachers in elementary classroom settings appear to use similar positioning acts as bilingual teachers/teacher-researchers with individual multilingual students.

Embodied mathematical pedagogy to liberate racialized and multilingual bodies.

When language is defined narrowly in mathematics classrooms, racially and linguistically minoritized students in classrooms could be systematically positioned as “learners of deficiency.” Recent scholarship calls for expanding the notion of language to emphasize embodied expression of mathematical ideas. Taking a critical perspective to understand racialized experiences of using languages in disciplinary learning spaces, this article proposes the reconceptualization of embodiment as a language for racialized multilingual learners. This study was conducted in a Grade 1 classroom in a linguistically and racially diverse school in Canada. Through a series of professional development sessions, we worked with an experienced teacher to redesign the normalized and institutionalized pedagogy toward greater mobility of racialized multilingual learners’ bodies, which was intertwined with their intellectual liberation. Focusing on the spatiality of pedagogy, the previously restrictive areas in the school were transformed into a place that augments embodied expression of mathematical ideas and agentive participation of minoritized learners. The analysis focused on the embodied discourse that participating racialized multilingual students used to actively engage in mathematical discussion. Our findings show that the designed pedagogy, characterized by the spatial and temporal expansion of the learning environment, offered more spaces for uncertainty and spontaneity with the decreased control of the teacher as an explicator. Our article furthers anti-colonial approaches to understand the intersection of racialized bodies and language in mathematics education.

First-grade multilingual students' executive function profiles and links to English reading achievement and difficulties: a person-centered latent profile analysis.

Although the important role of children's executive function (EF) in their reading development has been well-established, less is known about the extent to which multilingual children's EF components vary and whether the variability in different EF abilities explains multilingual children's English reading achievement. The present study explored the US first-grade multilingual children's (N = 3,819) profiles of EF abilities and how the profile membership was associated with their English reading achievement, using a nationally representative sample of multilingual children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K: 2011) study. We fit latent profile analysis with various EF components, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, approaches to learning, and attentional focus, and found three distinct EF profiles in multilingual children: (a) Below-Average EFs with Above-Average Cognitive Flexibility (10.13%), (b) Above-Average EFs (84.09%), and (c) Very Low Cognitive Flexibility (5.78%). Controlling for kindergarten English reading achievement scores and demographic variables, children in the Above-Average EFs profile attained a significantly higher English reading achievement score than their peers, while children in the Very Low Cognitive Flexibility group had the lowest English reading achievement score. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding multilingual children's heterogeneity in EF and have implications for the early identification of and tailored intervention for multilingual children at risk for reading difficulties.

Teacher Candidtates Working with Digital Technologies to Support Multilingual Students in Asset-Based Ways

This article demonstrates how the digital technologies of video recordings and webcams in a virtual learning after school program made it possible for teacher candidates to practice and reflect on asset-based pedagogies for multilingual students. Implications to engage teacher candidates in asset-based pedagogies in virtual science and engineering programming are discussed. The authors invite teacher educators to consider how the potentials of video recordings and webcams can be extended to other content areas and in-person teaching.

Multilingualism, translanguaging and transknowledging

AbstractKey findings, analysis and recommendations that have emerged from a research project, ‘Using Human Language Technology to enhance academic integrity, inclusivity, knowledge exchange, student diversity and retention’ at the University of South Australia conducted in 2019 are discussed in this article. The primary purpose of the project was to address some of the challenges and opportunities afforded by increasing student and teacher diversity at a predominantly English-medium Australian university through newly enhanced human language translation technology (HLT) also known as machine translation (MT). This technology is frequently used for the translation of human language, and it falls under the umbrella of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. From the institution’s perspective, key aims of the project were to contribute to the university’s Digital Learning Strategy priorities and core values embedded in a structural transformation of the university. These include integrity, accountability, diversity, social justice, engagement and collaboration. The researchers’ objectives focussed on multilingual pedagogies using HLT to support knowledge exchange (transknowledging), and translanguaging for all students. These disrupt inequitable hierarchies, and position bi-/multilingual students as valuable resources for monolingual staff and students.

Examining the What, Why, and How of Multilingual Student Identity Development in Computer Science

Developing student interest is critical to supporting student learning in computer science. Research indicates that student interest is a key predictor of persistence and achievement. While there is a growing body of work on developing computing identities for diverse students, little research focuses on early exposure to develop multilingual students’ interest in computing. These students represent one of the fastest growing populations in the US, yet they are dramatically underrepresented in computer science education. This study examines identity development of upper elementary multilingual students as they engage in a year-long computational thinking curriculum, and follows their engagement across multiple settings (i.e., school, club, home, community). Findings from pre- and post-surveys of identity showed significant differences favoring students’ experiences with computer science, their perceptions of computer science, their perceptions of themselves as computer scientists, and their family support for computer science. Findings from follow-up interviews and prior research suggest that tailored instruction provides opportunities for connections to out-of-school learning environments with friends and family that may shift students’ perceptions of their abilities to pursue computer science and persist when encountering challenges.

Individualized Language Plans: A Potential Tool for Collaboration to Support Multilingual Students

Prior research has documented how current policies and practices reinforce deficit perspectives of multilingual students at the secondary level, particularly students who have been labeled as long-term English learners. At the same time, scholars have argued for a need to collect detailed, individualized information about multilingual students’ linguistic, academic, and cultural assets and design supports for students based on this information. However, few concrete examples exist of ways that schools and districts have implemented these ideas at a systemic level. Building from prior research about who decides the educational services youth receive and drawing from theory about aesthetic care, authentic care, and reciprocal dialogue, we describe and analyze a tool two rural California school districts developed to foster collaboration in support of students considered long-term English learners: Individualized Language Plans (ILPs). Our analysis is based on three years of data collection, including interviews with district administrators and teachers involved in the design and implementation of ILPs, as well as observations of meetings where ILPs were created. We discuss implications for research, policy, and practice.

Middle School Engineering Teachers’ Enactments of Pedagogies Rooted in Funds of Knowledge and Translanguaging

Multilingual students should have opportunities to learn and do engineering in learning environments that foreground and sustain their cultural and linguistic practices. However, little is known about how middle school engineering teachers enact these environments. To address this gap in research and practice, this comparative case study describes the different ways in which two middle school technology and engineering teachers enacted pedagogies rooted in funds of knowledge and translanguaging. The teachers and research team engaged in a professional learning community, which focused on funds of knowledge and language-based pedagogies, for over one year. The teachers enacted pedagogies that incorporated principles of funds of knowledge and translanguaging, reflected on their teaching, and sought to improve their pedagogy in subsequent iterations of teaching. In this context, the research team analyzed the following data sources: (a) transcripts from classroom observations during a minimum of four engineering design challenges per teacher; (b) teacher artifacts (e.g., lesson plans, curriculum materials); and (c) monthly reflection sessions and interviews with each teacher. Thematic analyses of these data were used to answer the following research question: How did the teachers enact funds of knowledge and translanguaging pedagogies? Analyses indicated similarities and differences in how the teachers enacted funds of knowledge and translanguaging pedagogies. Similarities included (a) providing students with bilingual materials; (b) grounding engineering design challenges in the context of students’ communities; and (c) positioning parents as core intellectual resources. While the two teachers enacted pedagogies in similar ways, they also demonstrated differences. Alex, a bilingual teacher who had lived in Peru, enacted funds of knowledge pedagogies through sharing narratives and explaining how they mapped onto the engineering design challenges. He also frequently spoke to students in Spanish. Andrew, a white monolingual teacher who had lived and taught in his community for decades, enacted funds of knowledge pedagogies through experiential and place-based learning, and through incorporating popular culture. Despite his efforts to sustain bilingualism through providing bilingual curriculum materials, English remained the primary medium of instruction within his class, consistent with his school’s de facto English-only policy. This study indicates that funds of knowledge and translanguaging pedagogies may be fostered through community-oriented engineering design challenges and through school-level policies and practices that explicitly encourage multilingualism.