Translingual Discursive Spaces in Language and Arts Lessons

Abstract

Flexible multilingual pedagogies such as translanguaging pedagogies are promising stepping stones towards a more equitable access to educational resources for students of different backgrounds. Recent research in Luxembourgish preschool, Year 1 and Year 2 classes, show that teachers have begun to implement such pedagogies by encouraging the deployment of the students' full linguistic repertoires, including their home languages. Little attention has however been paid to the later years of primary school where the achievement gap between students with and without a migration background is particularly high. The present qualitative longitudinal study focusses on students in Years 4 and 5 and examines to what extent they deploy their linguistic repertoires in interaction with their peers. Drawing on observations, recordings and interviews, this paper explores the language use of two Portuguese-speaking 4 th graders in Language and Arts lessons. Findings show that the students mobilize their linguistic and cultural resources to different extents and, hereby, open or close translingual discursive spaces for further exchange. The findings should contribute to the understanding of multilingual students' language practices and provide insight into how their linguistic and cultural resources can be capitalized on. Flexible multilingual pedagogiesIn response to educational inequity, a growing body of scholars [5,19] promote flexible multilingual pedagogies that aim to, first, draw upon both the minority and the majority languages and, second,

Moving beyond language(s): a case study on a newcomer’s translanguaging practices

“…In sum, to this date, the majority of researchers investigating teacher or pupilled translanguaging understand translanguaging in relation to linguistic rather than semiotic repertoires. Furthermore, only few studies have been undertaken in multilingual contexts (Siry and Gorges 2019;Guzula et al 2016) and even fewer with newcomers in primary schools (Degano 2019;Gómez-Fernández 2011). The purpose of this article is to analyse the ways in which a newcomer in Luxembourg deploys and combines the resources of his semiotic repertoire in interaction with his peers.…”