“You don't actually experience it until you're actually in it”: A translanguaging simulation for preservice teachers

Abstract

In English-dominant countries, it is crucial to prepare teachers for culturally and linguistically responsive and equity-oriented teaching for multilingual language learners (MLLs), particularly with the growing linguistic diversity in K-12 classrooms. In the U.S. context, preservice teachers (PSTs), especially those who are English monolingual, often find it challenging to use linguistically responsive instructional strategies when teaching MLLs with a beginning-level English proficiency. In this article, we describe a simulation activity that we used in a U.S. university for PSTs to build empathy and experience the need for asset-based linguistically responsive teaching of MLLs. | A SHELTERED -TRANSLANGUAGING SIMULATIONSheltered instruction is content-based instruction making grade-level content in English comprehensible to English learners (Peregoy & Boyle, 2017), whereas translanguaging pedagogy refers to beliefs and instructional practices that leverage fluid language use of MLLs (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017). Although both instructional approaches are widely discussed in U.S. TESOL teacher education, their tenets are different. The former endorses English-medium instruction focusing mainly on English language development; the latter advocates bilingual instruction centering on bilingualism and social justice. However, considering their respective pragmatic and pedagogical values, teacher educators and practitioners have been seeking ways to blendThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.