Translanguaging in the Classroom

Abstract

This chapter presents the concept of translanguaging as an alternative for teachers to conceptualize the bilingual language practices of their students and explores what factors go into allowing teachers to use it as a pedagogical framework effectively. Translanguaging represents the diverse ways bilinguals communicate, make meaning, and construct identities, and frames these practices and processes in a positive or additive way. Latino families and communities in South Texas continue to use Spanish well beyond the typical three-generation pattern of immigrants’ language assimilation to English in the US. Bilingual education, implemented in Texas in the 1970s during the era of the Tejano Civil Rights Movement, has represented an important step forward for educational equity of linguistically marginalized students in the state. Drawing on ethnographic data from two elementary bilingual classrooms in South Texas, the chapter demonstrates that translanguaging is a useful framework for teachers to reorient their pedagogy to acknowledge the instructional potential of students’ diverse language practices.

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