Meaning-making and collaboration: teacher scaffolds within a translanguaging pedagogy
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Abstract
This study examined the forms and functions of collaborative scaffolds used by a monolingual teacher within a translanguaging pedagogy, which we frame as instruction that invites students to draw from their entire linguistic repertoires in ways that honor and sustain their multilingualism. More specifically, it investigates how a 9th-grade teacher of multilingual students fostered collaboration within a literacy activity that leverages strategic translation of grade-level texts. Data sources include ten consecutive video-recorded class periods involving strategic collaborative translation, interviews with the teacher, instructional materials, and translation artifacts. Findings show three major themes that capture teacher approaches to foster learners’ meaning-making. First, the teacher fostered collaboration to support meaning-making within the text by suggesting resources, guiding the collaborative steps, and praising to help students’ meaningful engagement with the text. Second, the teacher fostered collaboration around the text by setting collaborative ground rules and promoting joint construction of meaning to support students’ learning. Lastly, the teacher offered new teacher-student roles to support collaboration, which included affirming aspects of students’ identities during translation. This study offers specific ways that teachers might foster meaningful engagement with texts when they have limited experience with languages other than English, and similarly, emerging proficiencies in engaging in translanguaging pedagogies.
1 Introduction
Emergent bilinguals (EBs) – or students in the process of adding additional languages to their expanding linguistic repertoires – bring strengths to literacy classrooms that can support their meaning-making with texts (Garcia and Kleifgen 2020). World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA 2019: 1) publishes Guiding Principles of Language Development, which reflects the importance of such strengths and allows students’ “full linguistic repertoires” to support their “language development and learning”. Extensive research in translanguaging (Canagarajah 2011; Garcia and Li 2014) also highlights opportunities for leveraging these strengths, with pedagogies that allow students and teachers to draw on varied linguistic resources to understand features of specific genres (Burton and Van Viegen 2021), to develop disciplinary language and literacy (Hernandez Garcia and Schleppegrell 2021), and to deepen understandings of literary concepts, including theme and character (Puzio et al. 2016).
In the United States, researchers point to collaboration as one productive avenue to facilitate EBs’ understanding of texts (see Cole 2014 for a review). To date, however, research on scaffolding for EBs’ collaborative learning focuses largely on English-centric pedagogies (e.g. Ibrahim et al. 2015), rather than on instruction that purposefully welcomes languages other than English into the classroom. This article addresses the pressing need to “re-envision instructional scaffolding for linguistically diverse learners” (Oliveira and Althanases 2017: 123) and considers the strategic and inclusive ways that educators support EBs’ collaborative learning within translanguaging pedagogies. We build on prior research that argues that teachers can support EBs even “when they don’t speak their language” (Iddings et al. 2009: 52), but add to this conversation to consider how teachers might support meaning-making outside of English-centric instruction.
In this article, we present the collaborative scaffolds offered by a 9th-grade monolingual English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher to support students’ meaning-making with texts. We examine these scaffolds within the context of a translanguaging pedagogy (Garcia et al. 2016), which we understand as instruction that invites students to draw from their entire linguistic repertoires in ways that honor and sustain their multilingualism. Our study asks the following interrelated research questions:
How does the teacher scaffold EBs’ collaborative learning within a translanguaging pedagogy?
How does collaborative learning afford students’ meaningful engagement with the text, if at all?
2 Theoretical and empirical perspectives: meaningful engagement with texts
Before turning to these questions, we first describe our theoretical understanding of meaning-making with texts and how scaffolding collaboration can support students’ meaningful engagements within a translanguaging pedagogy.
To understand how collaborative scaffolding might support EB students’ meaningful engagement with texts in literacy classrooms, we begin with what meaning-making entails. We define meaning-making with texts as the process of negotiating and constructing understandings through participation in literacy practices (Heath 1983). This includes negotiating information within the text itself to understand the content, such as a character’s actions or how an author uses different language features to present meanings (e.g. Molle and Lee 2017). This also includes understandings around the text to understand discourse patterns, norms and approaches to texts, such as how to engage in a small group discussion or use a particular strategy to facilitate learning (e.g. Aukerman et al. 2017). This also includes understandings from the text to examine relationships between the reader and the word, such as how literacy activities might challenge or reflect aspects of one’s identity (e.g. Kwon et al. 2019). Within a translanguaging pedagogy, EBs’ meaning-making can be supported when they successfully mobilize their varied semiotic resources to interact with a text, with others, and with their own experiences to construct understandings.
Our understanding of EBs’ meaningful engagement with texts is built on two concepts: translanguaging and collaborative learning. Below, we describe how these two concepts help frame EBs’ meaning-making in literacy classrooms.
2.1 Understanding meaning-making through translanguaging
Translanguaging can be understood as a process of meaning-making for learners through the use of communicative (linguistic and non-linguistic) repertoires in ways that may deepen their engagement and understanding in the process of learning (Jones 2017; Li 2018; Otheguy et al. 2015). Our stances are consistent with MacSwan’s (2017) concept of translanguaging which purports that linguistic resources from a student’s linguistic repertoire can be viewed as belonging to a particular language that might contain “discrete grammatical resources” (MacSwan 2017: 180) that share similarities with or different from another language. That is, from a translanguaging perspective, the meaning-making process can be seen as an integrated system by which EBs use different linguistic, semiotic, and translingual resources to complete certain tasks (Canagarajah 2012; García and Li 2014; Li 2018).
While EBs’ translanguaging, such as the flexible use of languages, can be viewed as a natural practice across communicative contexts (García and Li 2014), EBs do not always systematically construct meaningful negotiations through content and language discussion when they engage in translanguaging (Alghasab et al. 2019; Sánchez et al. 2018). A translanguaging pedagogy that entails teachers’ purposive instruction to mobilize EBs’ full linguistic repertoire and to promote “productive contact across languages” (Cenoz and Gorter 2022: 18) is needed to maximize their meaning-making potential (Cummins 2019). Through the use of translanguaging pedagogies, teachers create opportunities for EBs to engage in class activities, express thoughts and understanding, co-construct meaning across languages, validate their identities, and deepen awareness of their language use (Creese and Blackledge 2010; García and Li 2014; Makalela 2014).
2.2 TRANSLATE as a translanguaging pedagogy
Much literature in the field (e.g. Conteh 2018; García and Leiva 2014) argues that EBs are best supported through translanguaging pedagogies that recognize their fluid semiotic daily practices and make connections to their meaning-making in literacy classrooms. In terms of implementation, pedagogical translanguaging can be ‘very broad’ and ‘take many shapes’ (Cenoz and Gorter 2022: 23). In our study, we examine strategic translation instruction as one translanguaging pedagogy that uses translation to support EBs’ meaning-making with text. In particular, this translanguaging pedagogy is adapted from Project TRANSLATE (Teaching Reading and New Strategic Language Approaches to Emergent Bilinguals), which requires teachers’ explicit instruction on leveraging EBs’ multilingual repertoire to create meaning through translation (David et al. 2019; Jimenez et al. 2015). In our pedagogy, strategic translation is structured differently from traditional grammar translations.
In our pedagogy, we acknowledge translation as a valuable resource for EBs to connect their daily and classroom practices (Jimenez et al. 2015; Orellana and Reynolds 2008). It has been reported in previous studies that many EBs translate written documents for family members who do not speak English (Eksner and Orellana 2012; Puzio et al. 2016). In our study, students also offered oral translations for their parents with school documents. Instead of word-by-word translation, strategic translation allows EBs to connect to their prior knowledge and enhances the comprehension of new information (Malakoff and Hakuta 1991). Second, our pedagogy recognizes the fluidity with which EBs utilize multiple languages for communicative purposes. This is in accordance with the translanguaging concept which states “bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively” (Garcia and Li 2014: 22). Throughout our pedagogy, we strive to recognize students’ translanguaging abilities by giving them opportunities to use their full linguistic repertoire in translation activities and classroom discussions. Last but not least, our pedagogy is also informed by research on collaborative learning (Hungwe and McCabe 2020; Hsieh 2017; Martin-Beltrán 2014; Puzio and Colby 2013). In these studies, it was demonstrated that collaborative learning can be incorporated into translation activities since peer interactions can lead to active participation, language and content learning (Pacheco et al. 2019).
During each instructional period, EBs are encouraged to use their full linguistic repertoire to:
Connecting to background knowledge. To connect students to texts, the teacher asks about their personal experiences and background knowledge before reading the text. For example, the teacher asks, “What is a threatening gesture in your culture?”
Reading the text independently. The teacher asks students to read the text silently and identify the main themes (e.g. character’s feelings, personality).
Share the main ideas from the text. Students are asked to share orally what they have learned from the text. Following the sharing, the teacher will be able to check students’ understanding and provide additional instructions before the translation activity.
Translating the selected sentences from texts in groups. For students to translate, the teacher selects one or two sentences from the text (which relate to the main theme of the text). The students are then asked to write down their translations.
Discussing and reconnecting the translation to the larger text. The teacher asks students to share, explain, and compare their translated sentences with the whole class, particularly the differences in word choices between English and Spanish. According to collaborative learning studies, peer scaffolding is used to facilitate collective understanding of the text (Cole et al. 2016; Jiménez et al. 2015; Puzio et al. 2016).
Translation, in this respect, is not simply students’ work with isolated words and sentences (Malakoff and Hakuta 1991), but a complex translanguaging process with great potential for promoting cross-linguistic flexibility and developing both language and literacy skills (García and Li 2014; Lewis et al. 2012).
2.3 Collaborative learning and meaning-making
From a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective, learning occurs primarily through interaction, where an individual constructs understanding through interacting with a text, with others, and with one’s own experiences (Vygotsky 1978). We explore one such interaction as collaborative learning, which Lin (2015) defines as including (1) simultaneous interaction, such as students and teachers simultaneously responding to each other during the class; (2) positive interdependence, such as students relying on each other’s understanding and developing shared knowledge in the translation process; (3) individual accountability, such as students taking their own responsibility to make sure the final group translation is appropriate to the context; and (4) equal participation, such as the teacher inviting students to contribute to the conversation to prevent them from being off-task.
The potential of collaborative learning for mainstream students’ (non-EB) meaning-making with texts has been documented in several studies. When collaborative learning is facilitated, students could actively collaborate with their peers to generate new ideas or rearrange existing ones (Lin 2015). Alghasab and Handley (2017), for example, suggested that simultaneous student-student interaction during collaborative writing activities provided different ways for students to reflect on their language patterns by responding and making suggestions to peers. Additionally, Cullen et al. (2013) found that students took responsibility for “planning talk” in order to make group decisions about the linguistic content and group writing structure. Students also used informal conversations to establish group rules as a means of ensuring equal participation.
Given the interactive nature of translanguaging in the classroom, we next turn our attention to collaborative scaffolding research to better understand opportunities for meaning-making (Martin-Beltrán 2014). First, with the support of collaborative scaffolds, EBs can explore how language is used to evaluate the clarity and appropriateness of language choice, thereby constructing understanding within texts (Jones and Chen 2012; Myhill 2018). As an illustration, pertinent research on joint translanguaging composition (e.g. Hsieh 2017; Kessler 2009; Kessler et al. 2012; Li and Zhu 2013) and collaborative translation activities (e.g. Jimenez et al. 2015; Hungwe 2019) have demonstrated how students can take advantage of their collective effort (Lin 2015) to compare, reflect on, and manipulate their languages while engaging with texts (Malakoff and Hakuta 1991). Further, while interacting with peers and teachers, EBs could bring their background and linguistic knowledge into the classroom, make connections and negotiate meaning from texts (Duarte 2019). Cole et al.’s (2016) study showed collaborative scaffolds afforded EBs opportunities to negotiate identities as Spanish speakers and membership within different linguistic communities. Lastly, teachers’ collaborative scaffolds play a vital role in helping EBs’ meaning-making around texts, such as creating opportunities for discourse where the students can learn and relearn procedural knowledge and validate the resources which students bring into the classroom (Palmer et al. 2014).
We note the important role that teachers play in collaborative scaffolds and translanguaging classrooms. As such, this study tries to bring these studies together by examining how a 9th-grade monolingual English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher integrates collaborative learning in ways that shape students’ meaning-making within translanguaging pedagogy. We specifically focus on how he strategically deploys different collaborative approaches to provide opportunities for students to learn within texts, learn around texts, and learn from texts.
3 Methodology
3.1 The context and participants
This study was conducted at Paget High School, an urban, public high school in the southeastern United States, where about nine percent of the 1,950 students are classified as ESOL students, whom we refer to as emergent bilinguals (EBs). Paget High is an ethnically and linguistically diverse school with EB students from Latin America, the Middle East, China, Japan, and South Korea, amongst other countries or regions. Approximately 70 % of Paget’s EBs speak Spanish; other home languages include Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Arabic. Sixty-three percent of Paget’s student population is labeled economically disadvantaged by the state and receives free and reduced lunch services.
Mr. Chelsea (pseudonym) was selected through purposeful sampling (Patton 1990) from another project led by this study’s second author. Mr. Chelsea, a white English-speaking monolingual speaker, has been teaching English to EBs at the high school level for two years. Previously, he was an English language teacher for adult ESOL students (English for Speakers of Other Languages) with over twenty years of experience serving in public and non-profit educational institutions. Despite his limited non-English knowledge, Mr. Chelsea reported in his interview that his awareness of cultural and language diversity is largely influenced by his experiences working with diverse groups of people.
The context for this study is Mr. Chelsea’s ninth-grade ESOL class. Among the fifteen students in his classroom, eleven students speak Spanish and others speak Portuguese, Japanese, and Tagalog. Since our study was conducted during the pandemic, several students (one Japanese student and two Filipino students) chose to attend classes from home. The only Portuguese student in the class was frequently absent. Our decision to involve Spanish-speaking students had less to do with planning than the fact that all eleven Spanish-speaking students were taking physical education classes at the same time. Based on our preliminary classroom observation and interviews with Mr. Chelsea, we purposefully sampled (Corbin and Strauss 2015) four focal EB students (all pseudonyms) from Mr. Chelsea’s classroom (see Table 1). These EBs all (1) spoke Spanish as a primary language, (2) had been in the US for at least 1 year, and (3) showed reading and writing ability both in English and Spanish.
Focal student demographics.
| Pseudonym | Country of birth | Time in US | English proficiency level | Language(s) spoken at home |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dario | Guatemala | 2 years | Low intermediate | Spanish |
| Cara | Guatemala | 6 years | High intermediate | Chuj & Spanish |
| Karen | Venezuela | 1 year | Beginner | Spanish & English |
| Lorena | Honduras | 3 years | Low intermediate | Spanish |
3.2 Data sources and collection
In this study, we video-recorded ten consecutive one-hour TRANSLATE lessons taught by Mr. Chelsea. During each lesson, Mr. Chelsea had students work in small groups of four to five to read the text materials, which included a short piece of fiction and a poem. We consistently observed Mr. Chelsea encouraging students to make text-to-text (e.g. discuss the appropriate word choice), text-to-self (e.g. connect the content to students’ personal experiences), and text-to-strategy (e.g. apply strategies to another context) connections during instruction. In accordance with other work using the TRANSLATE approach, students were assigned to read the text individually or as a group and collaboratively translate a short, but linguistically and conceptually rich, section. Mr. Chelsea, then, asked each group to compare and discuss their translations (the discussion could be either English or Spanish), which gave them opportunities to discuss word choice, sentence structuring, and interpretation to raise their metalinguistic awareness and ensure their comprehension of the selected text (Jimenez et al. 2015; Pacheco et al. 2019). In these TRANSLATE sessions, students had opportunities to consider ideational resources (e.g. how language constructs ideas), interpersonal resources (e.g. how language establishes relationships between author and audience), and textual resources (e.g. how language creates cohesion across a text) (Eggins 2004; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014). Figure 1 below captures this approach.
Modified TRANSLATE instructional approach (adapted from Jimenez et al. 2015).
After each lesson, the researchers conducted an audio-recorded reflection session with the teacher, where the teacher was asked to reflect on the positive and negative perspectives of his TRANSLATE instruction. In addition, the researchers collected ten sets of class artifacts for each lesson, including photos of students’ translation work, teacher handouts, and whiteboard work. In the final phase of data collection, the researchers conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews with each focal student and Mr. Chelsea. They were asked to reflect on the process of learning or implementing TRANSLATE instruction, their experiences with translanguaging in class, and how their understanding of the instruction changed over time.
Ten TRANSLATE lessons were transcribed for English utterances first. Then, a bilingual speaker transcribed all the student group-focused videotape that was spoken in Spanish and English. Finally, all verbatim transcriptions were reviewed by the research team (Cui has expertise in English and Pacheco has expertise in both English and Spanish). Across the data collection phase, the research team met regularly to discuss the successes and challenges of implementing TRANSLATE, as well as methodological considerations. We reviewed all secondary data (e.g. translation artifacts collected on-site, student interviews) to triangulate our primary data (e.g. video-recorded TRANSLATE instructional sessions). For instance, we looked at translation artifacts to check the description codes we created for collaborative scaffolds based on instructional videos.
3.3 Data analysis
In the study, we used the constant comparative method (Corbin and Strauss 2015) to investigate the relationships between teachers’ scaffolds, resources use, and students’ meaningful engagement with texts. To identify collaborative moments, we first used a priori coding based on Lin’s (2015) paradigm, which defines collaboration as simultaneous interaction, positive interdependence, individual accountability, and equal participation. We then adapted Alghasab et al.’s (2019) collaborative move codes to identify forms and functions of Mr. Chelsea’s scaffolds within our study (see Table 3 for adaptation). Particularly, we identified how meaning was made when diverse resources were utilized (e.g. linguistic resources, background knowledge, classroom resources) and how Mr. Chelsea addressed them strategically (e.g. suggested tools, confirmed bilingual identities). In this way, the descriptive coding process led to further exploration of the teacher’s role in scaffolding different meaning-making situations.
Following the first phase of analysis, we used axial coding techniques (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Lincoln and Guba 1985) to identify themes that were related to our second research question. We paid particular attention to grouping the different forms and functions of scaffolding as well as connecting them with our conceptual understanding of meaning. In addition, we analyzed ten post-observation interviews with Ms. Chelsea in order to understand whether or not he is addressing students’ meaning-making concerns during the activities. Last but not least, in phase 3, we attempted to triangulate our findings by returning to the constant comparative method and reviewing both our findings from phases 1 and 2 alongside the student interviews and Mr. Chelsea’s two semi-structured interviews. See Table 2 for examples of how specific data excerpts were coded into a priori categories following forms and functions, and then grouped into themes.
Phases of data analysis.
| Methods of analysis | Data used for analysis | Sample coding |
|---|---|---|
| Using Lin’s collaboration framework to identify moments of collaborative learning. Open coding to establish properties (forms) of scaffolding; and dimensions (functions) of scaffolds. |
Field notes form ten observations of TRANSLATE instruction. Ten video-recorded observations of TRANSLATE instruction. |
Property (form): simultaneous interaction; equal participation; praising. Dimensions (function): Scaffolding through linguistic resources; Scaffolding through identity resources; Scaffolding through procedural resources. |
| Axial coding to group CL scaffolds within meaning-making with texts | Properties and dimensions of scaffolds identified within Phase 1 of coding. Ten postobservation interviews. |
Thematic code: Metalinguistic talk for meaning-making within texts; Reflexive dialogue for meaning-making from texts; Strategies for meaning-making around texts. |
| Data triangulation | Codes and themes from Phase 1 and 2. Two semi-structured interviews with Mr. Chelsea. Four semi-structured interviews with focal students. |
Teacher interview: “For the character question, I needed to come along and support them a little bit more than I thought that I would as they wrestled with that question”. |
4 Findings
4.1 Scaffolding within translanguaging pedagogy
In the first section of our findings, we address our first research question to explore how Mr. Chelsea scaffolded students’ collaborative learning within a translanguaging pedagogy. Considering not every classroom interaction was meaningful or collaborative (Alghasab et al. 2019), we focused on interactions involving Mr. Chelsea’s collaborative scaffolding techniques, such as direct intervention, task instructions, and collaborative skills, to foster a collaborative learning environment. Using Lin’s framework (simultaneous interaction, positive interdependence, individual accountability, and equal participation) to identify collaborative interaction moments, we further adopted the translanguaging approach to describe how flexible language use within text negotiation shapes different types of meaning-making. Table 3 shows how Mr. Chelsea supported students in making meaning within the translanguaging pedagogy through attention to the content (e.g. use of linguistic resources that encourage meaning-making within the text), attention to identities (e.g. resources for connecting EB themselves with meaning-making from the text), and attention to procedures (e.g. resources that guide participation in the activity to understand around the text).
Collaborative learning scaffolding resources for meaning-making.
| Collaborative metalinguistic resources | Collaborative reflexive dialogue for meaning-making from texts | Collaborative strategies for meaning-making around texts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collaborative learning scaffold forms | Scaffolding through linguistic resources | Scaffolding through identity resource | Scaffolding through procedural resources |
| Collaborative learning scaffold functions | Suggesting resources: T offers/defines, meanings through question-asking, giving examples, using gestures, and building on prior learning. Identifying resources: T identifies which resources can or can’t be used within an interaction. |
Praising: T acknowledges student contributions to promote engagement. Promoting individual & collective contributions: T asks students to contribute to tasks individually & to build on classmates’ contributions, consider alternative suggestions, and seek feedback. |
Guiding collaborative steps: T describes how to complete tasks and brainstorming ideas. Readjusting roles: T positions himself as leaner, students as experts. Setting ground rules: T makes explicit procedural instruction to accomplish a task and reminds students of the ground rules for group collaboration. |
| Example | T: Setting is the location where the story takes place. There may be more than one location, like our setting right now is George High School. I mean, we’re in my classroom, George High School or in our city. Okay? All those are settings, or what’s happening right now. | T: Well, I know but this (pointing at white board), I said use English and your mother tongue. S: xxx (a word in Spanish). |
T: Think about the basic characters, settings, and plot. I don’t want you to just take your phone and type this whole sentence into Google Translate and get the answer. I want you to work together and see you if you can figure out how you would translate this, and what words and phrases in Spanish to translate this sentence. |
4.1.1 Scaffolding through linguistic resources
By paying attention to linguistic resources, Mr. Chelsea scaffolded collaboration for meaning-making within the text through (1) suggesting linguistic resources, and (2) identifying which resources may be helpful when translating texts. When suggesting resources, Mr. Chelsea identified aspects of the English-language text that were valuable to attend to when translating, such as a definition of the setting that included the location for “what’s happening right now”. In another example of suggesting resources, Mr. Chelsea suggested students use Spanish to compare language choices to understand the nuances across languages, such as comparing “fled in terror” and “fled with terror” in English and Spanish. When identifying which resources were helpful to understand the text, Mr. Chelsea often elicited students’ previous linguistic knowledge to then signal which resources could be used to participate in the translation activity. In one lesson, he connected a discussion relating to capitalization to remind students that Death was a character when translating the text.
4.1.2 Scaffolding through identity resources
Mr. Chelsea attended to identity resources to help make meaning from the text through (1) promoting individual and collective contributions of meaning, (2) praising, and (3) readjusting roles. To facilitate individual and collective contributions to this meaning-making, Mr. Chelsea asked students to connect aspects of their identity to the text. For example, Mr. Chelsea asked Dario to display a threatening gesture from his culture in order to understand Death’s decision to “[make] a threatening gesture”.
In another example, Mr. Chelsea encouraged students to build on others’ suggestions when translating the text. He did this by referring to a student’s wondering “if Death is a character”, and then recasting the question to seek other students’ feedback. He also scaffolded meaning-making through explicit praise. This entailed Mr. Chelsea acknowledging student identities as collaborators, as well as their participation as their identities as meaning-makers in connecting their cultural background and the threatening gestures depicted in the text.
Lastly, he scaffolded collaboration by readjusting roles within the activity. Mr. Chelsea typically positioned students as language experts to leverage Spanish linguistic resources, such as asking the different meanings of empujado and empujaron to remind students who is jostling whom in the text. He readjusted this role also to bring students’ cultural identities into conversation with the text. He explicitly asked students to examine the context of the poem, Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits (Espada 1989), in order to rethink the relationship between the character and students. He encouraged students to connect their own experiences learning and using English in public settings as a way to empathize with the experiences of the title character in the poem to help understand why the character quits his job.
4.1.3 Scaffolding through procedural resources
Lastly, Mr. Chelsea scaffolded students’ understanding around the text by (1) setting collaborative ground rules, and (2) guiding the collaborative strategies. Guiding collaborative strategies included Mr. Chelsea helping leverage collective understanding to help students analyze the organization of the text. For instance, he reminded students to attend to aspects of the setting and conflict while students worked on group translations. When setting collaborative ground rules, Mr. Chelsea provided explicit procedural instructions to support students in completing tasks, such as encouraging students to explore the differences and similarities between two languages during group translation.
4.2 Collaborative learning and meaningful engagement with texts
Building on these initial findings, we now turn to the relationship between Mr. Chelsea’s scaffolds and opportunities for meaning-making. We selected these excerpts purposefully. First, each excerpt represents Mr. Chelsea’s strategic collaborative scaffolding from our data set (as shown in Table 3). Second, those excerpts illustrate students and Mr. Chelsea trying to engage with texts by leveraging linguistic, identity, and procedural resources in English or Spanish.
4.2.1 Collaborative metalinguistic talk for meaning-making within texts
Attention to linguistic resources can encourage EBs’ meaning-making within the text, which was achieved through cultivating EBs’ metalinguistic knowledge (Schleppegrell 2018). An individual’s metalinguistic knowledge, or ability to reflect upon language (Berry 2005), can be an important tool for assisting students in noticing and responding to word choice, thus demonstrating the connections between linguistic resources and the meaning-making within texts.
A common collaborative scaffold in Mr. Chelsea’s instruction was for EBs to discuss word choices when translating texts. These scaffolds encouraged students to use their metalinguistic knowledge to discuss “what is going on” and “why to use this word to represent meaning”. Below, we described how he worked with students as they considered two translations of the sentence, “Master, I was jostled in the market” from John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samara (1934). Mr. Chelsea joined their group translation discussion that focused on word choice:
Mr. Chelsea: what’s the difference between empujado and empujaron? It looks similar to me but, why does this one end in ‘o’ and this one end in ‘o-n’? Cara?
Cara: Empujado I think is like in the past, and empujaron it’s like the present.
Dario: No, no because empujaron is also in the past.
Mr. Chelsea: Tell me the differences between these two translations (asks if it’s just a different way of saying it just like there would be in English)
Cara: Empujar, los dos son pasados verdad? Empujaron, empujado. (‘Push, both are past tense right? They pushed, pushed.’)
Dario: Empujado is for one person, empujaron is for one or more person.
Mr. Chelsea: So this is more like a plural past (pointing at empujado), and this is a singular past (pointing at empujaron). That’s awesome. What word (pointing at empujado) is this in English? What word is this?
Karen: Turn around.
Mr. Chelsea: Turn around?
Karen: Jostle.
During this group discussion event, Mr. Chelsea identified students’ Spanish resources empujado, empujaron and used them to check students’ understanding and communicate the nuances to negotiate meaning within the text (Turn 1, 4). Cara used her Spanish linguistic resources in order to participate in the discussion (Turns 2, 5). Then, Dario realized that Ms. Chelsea may not be able to understand Cara’s Spanish response, so he translated it and corrected it in English (Turns 2 and 5). He clarified Ms. Chelsea’s understanding and suggested that it might be challenging for them to provide an accurate English translation. Despite the fact that Ms. Chelsea did not understand the difference between empujado and empujaron, he confirmed Cara and Dario’s Spanish translations and used them as resources for checking understanding. During this event, Mr. Chelsea suggested that students’ linguistic expertise could be utilized as a valuable resource and created a ‘translanguaging space’ (Li 2011) for students to learn (Turn 7).
In the post-interview, Mr. Chelsea confirmed his goal was to recognize students’ linguistic resources so more students could contribute to the collective understanding of the main idea of the text through the discussion on the keyword jostle.
In the following section, Mr. Chelsea asked the students to write their group translations on the whiteboard, and he noted that there were two versions of the Spanish translation for the word jostle. Therefore, Mr. Chelsea decided to focus on students’ lexical choices in connection with the contents of the text.
Mr. Chelsea: Jostle? Okay. Jostle […]. In this story, the word Jostle, the servant is telling the merchant. (pointing at empujado) “Master I was jostled in the market, I turned around and saw death”. This is a singular past, does that mean one person was jostled or one person jostled the speaker? “I” is one person, but the act of being jostled may involve lots of people. But is it singular here (pointing at empujado) because it’s one person speaking and is it plural here (pointing at empujaron) because more people are jostling the singular person? Does it make sense?
Mr. Chelsea: I see confused. Right? Okay. Imagine you’re in a market. How many of you have been in a crowded public market?
(students raising hands)
Mr. Chelsea: If I am in the market and I am standing right here. And I’m trying to buy something from Karen and Cara turns around and bumps into me. And then I turn and say, “Oh, I’m sorry”. And then I turned around and I bumped into Dario. Okay. When I’m talking to Karen and Cara bumps into me, it’s one person bumping one person, right? But. Then if I turn around and I hit Dario, and I bumped him now there are three people being jostled. So how does that relate to those two usages of a word?
During this discussion on jostle, Mr. Chelsea’s collaborative scaffolding guided the metalinguistic conversation. He attempted to take advantage of students’ translation (jostle’s plural and singular forms) to facilitate their understanding of how language expresses meaning (Turn 1). The discussion over the singular and plural, however, may not be related to the meaning of the text, as Mr. Chelsea misunderstood “simple past” as “singular past” (Turn 3). Instead, he could have been more explicit about language forms with meaning in contexts by asking who is/are the actor (s) of this jostle action to highlight his point.
To answer how scaffolding affords students’ meaningful engagement within texts, we believe Mr. Chelsea’s attention to metalinguistic knowledge was a key component. Throughout the event, he encouraged students to engage in metalinguistic negotiations across multiple linguistic resources and to develop a shared understanding of content. In particular, he managed these resources by having students reflect on the servant’s jostling processes (one person was jostled or one person jostled the speaker); clarifying word choices for correct translation (what’s the difference between empujado and empujaron); and referring to the context to help content understanding of the text (how does a crowded public market relate to those two usages of a word).
4.2.2 Collaborative reflexive dialogue for meaning-making from texts
Student meaning-making from texts was produced by affording students opportunities to reflect on the aspects of identity and relationships in the text (Pacheco et al. 2019). Mr. Chelsea’s collaborative scaffolds helped elucidate the relationship between the author and reader (Ellis 2016), and how these relationships can be connected to EBs’ cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge. In the following excerpts, we described how he scaffolded students’ meaning-making from texts by exploring the relationship between the text (main character) and the students themselves. Students had just read Martin Espada’s poem Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits (1989), and Mr. Chelsea was leading their whole class discussion focused on identity resources to understand the relationships between the main character and other characters. In preparation for this interaction, Ms. Chelsea told students that they could discuss the text in Spanish.
Mr. Chelsea: Now, I want to ask you how many characters are there in this poem.
Lorena: One?
Mr. Chelsea: One. Why do you say one?
Lorena: Cause “I” is talking about one person. What’s his name? I forgot.
Cara: Jorge?
Mr. Chelsea: Good! Does he mention any other people in the poem? Also in the poem, he says “maybe what they say is right-I’m smart but I have a bad attitude”. So, who do you think “they” is?
Cara: The people in the church.
Mr. Chelsea: Yes. Jorge and church people are the characters in this poem. But there’s one main character in this poem and his name is Jorge.
To support students’ reflexive dialogue on relationships and identities, Mr. Chelsea addressed the relationship question by using pronouns to identify the relationships between characters in the text. He (Turn 3) first affirmed Lorena’s answer to the pronoun “I” which indicates one character in the text. It seemed that Lorena (Turn 4) understood Mr. Chelsea’s question as being about the single main character rather than both primary and secondary characters in the text. Since Mr. Chelsea announced that the focus would be on characters “present” in the poem, Lorena’s response was reasonable given the framing and the content of the poem. Mr. Chelsea (Turn 6) then attempted to clarify his question about the primary and secondary characters by asking if there were any other people in the poem. During the post-interview session, Mr. Chelsea confirmed that the purpose of the subsequent question was to identify the primary and secondary characters in the poem. It is noteworthy that even though Mr. Chelsea’s scaffold assisted the students in recognizing the different characters in the text, he did not provide explicit instructions on how to distinguish the relationships among the characters.
After identifying the main character in the text, Mr. Chelsea and the students attempted to describe the main character. Jorge’s interpersonal relationships, decisions, and emotions were the focus of this event.
Mr. Chelsea: All right. We are only focusing on the main character here. So we need to figure out: What does Jorge say? What does he do? What action does he perform? What does he think? And then how might he feel?
Lorena: He says nobody knows his name?
Mr. Chelsea: Hmm, yeah that’s really good, Now, what does the character do? There’s one, there’ one principal action that he takes in the poem. There’s like one main thing that he does. Dario, I saw you. So go, your turn.
Dario: He cleaned the church.
Mr. Chelsea: He does clean the church. That’s true. That’s not the principal action that he takes in the poem. There’s something important that he does at the end of the poem.
Dario: He quit the job?
Mr. Chelsea: He quits! Why does he quit the job? Does Jorge have a conflict with another character in the poem?
Lorena: The people from the church?
Mr. Chelsea: Yes, church people. Why?
Dario: Because nobody knows him?
Mr. Chelsea: I love how you identified that, because the three major parts of the poem all start with “no one”, right? No one asks where I’m from, no one can speak my name, nobody knows how to even pronounce
Mr. Chelsea made explicit scaffolds to facilitate students’ collective contributions to learn from the reflexive dialogue on character (the role and relationships with others in the text). He particularly provided positive feedback (Turn 3, 5) to position students as central participants in the dialogue. Students were motivated (Turn 2, 4, 6) to participate in meaning negotiation as the explicit scaffolds afforded them opportunities to talk about “who is participating” in the text. In this way, the meaning-making from texts was realized through students’ exploration of the roles and their relationships.
Below, Mr. Chelsea proceeded with the character discussion by encouraging students to reflect on their attitudes or feelings toward the main character.
Mr. Chelsea: Now, how might he feel? You might have to imagine yourself what would it be like to be Jorge, and how might Jorge be feeling inside of him. Okay? You guys are the Spanish experts. I want you to talk together. Maybe it could be in your first language or in English to describe how Jorge might be feeling.
Cara: Maybe disappointed.
Mr. Chelsea: Disappointed? Okay. That’s great. Yeah. Can you kind of explain that a little bit? Like what or why might he feel disappointed?
Cara: Disappointed with the church because no one knows him.
Mr. Chelsea: Okay, good. And there is a conflict between Jorge and church people, maybe society. Because you have come here, it’s not only the people who don’t know you or people say stupid things, it’s also that you don’t understand some of the language idioms, cultural decision making or things like that.
Karen: He feels invisible […].
Mr. Chelsea: Good! He feels invisible and there’s a lack of understanding between him and the culture or the people he’s living with. So, there is a conflict with what he’s experienced in society. I think those are great words to explain how he feels.
Mr. Chelsea’s collaborative scaffolds clearly focused on positioning students’ bilingual identities to make connections with the character. He (Turn 1) positioned their identities as Spanish experts (you guys are the Spanish experts) and, consequently, students had access to a broader range of knowledge resources for understanding Jorge’s feelings. When Cara (Turn 2) gave the possible answer disappointed, he praised (Turn 3) her answer and asked if there was evidence to support her statement. With Cara’s explanation (Turn 4), Mr. Chelsea extended (Turn 5) the conversation to the relationship between Jorge and the church people by connecting students’ identity resources to the author’s message. Karen’s answer invisible (Turn 6) demonstrated how she built on Mr. Chelsea and Cara’s conversation and reflected on her own identity (there’s a lack of understanding between him and the culture).
Despite the ‘Spanish friendly’ reminder from Ms. Chelsea at the beginning of the event, we observed that students rarely used Spanish in whole-class interactions except when translating sentences.
4.2.3 Collaborative strategies for meaning-making around texts
Lastly, meaning-making around texts was produced through signaling which resources could be used in alignment with or in opposition to the collective and individual understanding of the text. In Mr. Chelsea’s class, this included opportunities for students to recognize how different text features and resources work together to make meaning.
In this final example, Mr. Chelsea helped integrate procedural knowledge, cultural knowledge, and verbal language to talk about the role of language. Students had just finished reading Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits and were about to translate the first verse with groups. Mr. Chelsea guided students’ meaning-making processes that could be used to interpret not only the current passage, but also other literary texts.
Lorena: What am I supposed to do?
Mr. Chelsea: So basically I want you to work together as a group to first, decide who are the characters. What is the setting, the location? And then what is the basic plot? And, I want you to work as a group to translate the sentence on the handout.
Lorena: Translate this? (pointing at the first verse)
Mr. Chelsea: Exactly. Translate. You can use it (phone) for the individual word if there’s a word that you don’t know how to translate. When you are translating, try to think: What kind of word is a keyword in the sentence? What does it express in a sentence? What does a word communicate meaning in a sentence?
In this excerpt event, Mr. Chelsea scaffolded students to participate in translation activity through explicit instruction on how to engage in group translation. Although it was not the first-time students work in group translation, he frequently (Turn 2, 4) demonstrated procedural knowledge to remind students of how the text organization (setting, location, characters) and language use (words, sentences) worked together to express meaning. The post-interview with Mr. Chelsea confirmed that procedural knowledge was intended to provide students with valuable resources for making sense of the text so they may draw inferences from it for future learning. Though Mr. Chelsea allowed the occasional use of Google translation, we did not observe students using machine translation frequently during group translation sessions. In the post-observation interview, Mr. Chelsea explained this might result from his strict “No Phone” policy in class.
Once students finished their group translation, Mr. Chelsea guided the whole class discussion focusing on the role language plays and its relation to the story’s context:
Mr. Chelsea: Let’s look at our first translation of the poem. “He says no one asked where I’m from. I must be from the country of janitors”. Is there a country in the world where only janitors live and come from?
Dario: No.
Mr. Chelsea: No, because that doesn’t exist. There is no country of janitors. So what is the poet talking about here? Jorge is saying I must be from the country of janitors. What does that mean? Any ideas? Karen.
Karen: Maybe in his country, are much janitor?
Mr. Chelsea: Okay. Maybe in his country, they have a lot of janitors. Okay. That, that’s possible. Where is Jorge from?
Karen: Honduras.
Mr. Chelsea: Honduras. When he says I must be from the country of janitors. Is he saying that seriously or is he saying it in a different way? Is it fact or is it something else?
Cara: Something else.
Mr. Chelsea: It’s something else. Okay, good. Cara, why do you think it’s something else?
Cara: I don’t know, but I think it’s something else.
Mr. Chelsea: Let’s use Google map to see where is Honduras and what it looks like.
(showing students the location of Honduras and the pictures of it)
Does it look like a country of janitors?
Lorena: Maybe because Honduras isn’t look like country of janitors?
Mr. Chelsea: I agree. I don’t think he’s saying this, as a statement of fact. He’s saying something else. And what I think he is, I think he is using sarcasm (writing the word on the board). Do y’all know what sarcasm is?
Students: Yes.
Mr. Chelsea: He says, “Honduras, you are a squatter’s camp outside the city of their understanding”. He’s kind of saying this, kind of using sarcasm again. And I would say using something called irony (writing irony on the board).
“I post the Fiesta of the bathroom”. What is, what is he talking about there? What does Fiesta mean in Spanish?
Karen: Party.
Mr. Chelsea: Party! Okay. Have you guys ever had a party before? What does it look like?
Dario: Cakes and drinks!
Mr. Chelsea: Okay, but have you ever had a party in a bathroom before?
Students: No!
Mr. Chelsea: Of course not. He’s not literally hosting a party in the bathroom. I think he’s frustrated and he’s using sarcasm as a way to deal with this situation.
This discussion event depicted how Mr. Chelsea scaffolded students by offering multiple resources and showing how different resources can be orchestrated to make meaning. On the one hand, Mr. Chelsea (Turn 1) first used students’ group translation as a resource for students to negotiate the general organization of the text (character, setting, plot). When suggesting (Turn 11) using Google Maps and pictures, he explicitly included them as additional resources to help students explain if Jorge is from the country of janitors and to help students identify the tone of the sentence. When discussing the bathroom fiesta (Turn 15, 17, 19), Mr. Chelsea connected students’ personal experiences with parties to explain students’ uncertainty of sarcasm in the text. Furthermore, Ms. Chelsea legitimized those resources (tools, background knowledge, Spanish) for meaning-making, which students once considered irrelevant to learning. As a result of this interaction, Karen, whom we had not previously observed participating in the whole-class discussion, took advantage of the opportunity to engage in the conversation for the first time.
5 Discussion
A systematic functional linguistic approach argues that language learning is “learn the language, learn about language, and learn content through language” (Halliday 1993: 113). That is, learning a language involves not only the acquisition of knowledge about the language, but also the acquisition of skills to expand learners’ meaning-making repertoires (Young 2008).
5.1 Meaningful engagement with texts
This study describes how a monolingual ESL teacher focused on this type of language learning by scaffolding students’ meaningful engagement with texts. The discussion on language use in Spanish and English allowed students to clarify content misunderstandings and deepen metalinguistic awareness. When negotiating identity resources like the character’s relationship, students were able to closely examine how their personal experiences elicit characters’ relationships and the author’s attitude, and in doing so, made connections with the broader context of meaning. The negotiation on procedural knowledge afforded students opportunities to orchestrate how different resources work together to ensure meaning-making.
5.1.1 Learning the language
Identifying and suggesting different linguistic resources supported students’ metalinguistic conversation, thus deepening their understanding within texts. As a result of the metalinguistic discussion of linguistic resources, such as word choice, students gained an understanding of how language choices relate to the content meaning or the immediate context of the situation. We contend that Mr. Chelsea’s scaffolds on metalinguistic talk, which include indicating Spanish resources and connecting with existing knowledge, provided students with the opportunity to explore the connection between their metalinguistic knowledge and the linguistic resources at their disposal to make meaning (Swain 1985). Despite the fact that researchers have argued that advanced language learners may exhibit stronger reflective language skills (Nassaji and Fotos 2010; Roehr-Brackin 2018), less advanced students could be more aware of their language use if teachers provided scaffolds for comparing and reflecting on their own language choices (Jimenez et al. 2015; Makakoff and Hakuta 1991). Our students’ post-interviews confirmed these findings, illustrating how teacher scaffolding helped them monitor their language use and understand the content.
5.1.2 Learning about language
Mr. Chelsea’s scaffolding also allowed students to examine the text organization and their own thinking process when engaging around texts. Mr. Chelsea’s attention to text organization also aligns with the systematic functional language perspective (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) that views language learning as being conscious of the ways language is presented within its context (Schleppegrell 2013). Our findings indicate, however, that Ms. Chelsea faced challenges when scaffolding collaboration. He sometimes struggled to reorganize classroom resources (images, translation sentences, whiteboard writing, rules) and connect them with other possible resources (personal experiences, Spanish, online tools). We note that Mr. Chelsea’s choices of collaborative strategies were pivotal for students to pay attention to the text elements when transferring to other literacy practices (Danielsson and Selander 2021). We believe Mr. Chelsea’s choices of possible resources are also influenced by the classroom ecology that argues for the exploration of “ecological minutiae of interactional practices in classrooms” (Creese and Blackledge 2010: 104) and connects those seemingly trivial interactions to language choice and language policy in class (Creese and Martin 2008). Further research could use the ecological framework to explain such “contradictions, the unpredictabilities” that underlie the ESL literacy classroom (Kramsch and Steffensen 2008: 8).
5.1.3 Learning through language
Promoting individual and collective contributions in reflexive dialogue encouraged students to actively participate in the discussion, leveraging their identities to comprehend the text, and exploring the nuanced voices from texts. We argue that such reflexive dialogues on the relationship and identity resources can help students actively engage in class and position them as collaborators to make meaning from the text (Brown 2009). First, students were provided with opportunities to use their cultural and linguistic resources to articulate and explain their thinking process (Schleppegrell 2013). When Mr. Chelsea valued students’ Spanish identities, students could collaboratively construct meaning by drawing on linguistic resources and personal experiences in their conversations. Second, promoting individual and collective contributions of meaning allows for more dialogues on how meaning is constructed through relationship establishment. This relationship includes not only the character’s relationship from the text but also the relationship between interlocutors in the class. This is asserted by research suggesting meaningful engagement with text needs to be situated in reflexive dialogue where it resonates with students’ experiences and helps support content goals (Ellis 2016; Swain and Watanabe 2019). Our findings presented above show how the teacher situated dialogues in the student’s existing knowledge and used them to support meaning-making. Finally, the reflexive and interactive feature of such a scaffold allows students to visualize and articulate their thinking process and how it is connected to meaning construction from texts (Ebbelind and Segerby 2015).
Finally, in the US, the teaching force is predominantly white and monolingual (Hollins 2015), thus creating ideological, linguistic, and pedagogical challenges for those who do not share their students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Ellis 2004). How could monolingual teachers incorporate language-specific resources into their instruction (Pacheco and Miller 2016)? Below, we describe this concern.
5.2 A case for the monolingual teacher in an ESL classroom
The study argues that translanguaging can be used as a pedagogical strategy to encourage EBs to use their linguistic repertoires systematically for educational purposes (García and Leiva 2014). In this process, teachers play a crucial role. In our two research questions, we identified a major issue that needs to be addressed: how can monolingual teachers respond to the increasing trend toward translanguaging in language learning and teaching? In contrast to the traditional view that monolingual educators are obstacles to translanguaging pedagogy, Mr. Chelsea demonstrated his ability to incorporate diverse linguistic resources into translanguaging pedagogy (Miller and Zuengler 2011). During a whole-class discussion, Mr. Chelsea acknowledged and applied different linguistic resources, such as translation and student knowledge of Spanish, to enhance his and students’ meaning-making. His expertise in English syntax allowed him to interpret personal pronouns and tense relationships in Spanish, which enabled him to provide guidance in his following instructions. Also, he understood the importance of inviting EB identities into an English-centered classroom, therefore establishing a safe environment for EBs to express their feelings and understandings (Duarte 2019). We believe that such abilities are highly desirable in English-dominated classrooms. In addition, his abilities are consistent with Coady et al.’s (2016: 344) requirements for ELL teachers as “specialized knowledge and skills in teaching and learning”.
While Mr. Chelsea showed his potential to celebrate students’ linguistic and cultural resources in the English-centric classroom, his scaffoldings were very similar to other monolingual English teachers. Instead of taking advantage of students’ linguistic and cultural resources to negotiate meaning at different levels (Pacheco et al. 2019), Mr. Chelsea tended to use those resources as a strategy to promote peer interaction and participation. On one hand, Mr. Chelsea’s monolingual status enables him to recognize and adapt other semiotic resources (Canagarajah 2012), such as Google Maps and student resources, to support his participation and that of his students. On the other hand, despite his willingness to support meaningful negotiation, Mr. Chelsea found it difficult to facilitate conversations other than lexical discussion as he did not speak Spanish.
As Mr. Chelsea acknowledged, practicing translanguaging pedagogy repeatedly over time enabled him to strategically refine his participation and develop translanguaging competence. During his final interview, he explained how he used Spanish and English, even at the lexical level, to encourage students to construct text comprehension from their own experiences. Although, in his post-observation interview, he did note times when he was confused and wondered how to make use of all students’ first languages in order to further facilitate meaning negotiation. Or, alternatively, what else can Mr. Chelsea do to make translanguaging pedagogy more accessible to students?
It has been pointed out by Canagarajah (2011) that translanguaging pedagogies are lacking explicit systematic structures, which poses confusion for teachers who wish to put this into classroom practice. Hence, we argue that structured translanguaging pedagogy can assist teachers with multilingual classrooms (Canagarajah 2011). We intend to facilitate such structured translanguaging pedagogies by incorporating collaborative learning scaffolds and strategic translation procedures within our translanguaging pedagogy. In spite of this, the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies will likely take considerable time, as monolingual teachers may find it difficult to rethink traditional conceptions of language and multilingual classrooms (Lin 2013; Wang 2019).
5.3 Implications and future research
The implications of our findings relate to two issues in second language literacy research. Our findings addressed the vital role of metalinguistic talk in EBs’ literacy development, and how teachers might scaffold this talk. In addition, the study suggested that language teachers should take advantage of the students’ metalinguistic awareness in order to help them comprehend how language constructs content knowledge (Gebhard et al. 2014). Even though our findings indicated that metalinguistic awareness is critical to meaning-making, we acknowledge that scaffolds for describing language forms and functions for ESL disciplinary meaning-making purposes are not reflected in our data (Berry 2005). It is therefore important that future research supports teachers’ use of metalanguage scaffolds in ESL disciplinary classrooms to uncover how language constructs different text features and conveys meaning (Jones and Chen 2012; Myhill 2018).
Furthermore, EB’s linguistic resources play an important role in language learning and content understanding within the context of emerging studies in language learning (Creese and Blackledge 2010; David et al. 2019; Jimenez et al. 2015). According to these studies, EBs are capable of drawing on multiple linguistic resources and aligning their language choices with the purpose of meaning-making. While we believe that ESL teachers in mainstream classrooms can and do integrate students’ linguistic resources, we acknowledge that explicit talk about strategic language use with different purposes for meaning-making is rare.
Finally, our study showed students and teachers using their full linguistic repertoire to engage with the text, and furthermore, to explore and reflect on the role of language in these engagements. Since this study focused on strategies employed by teachers to engage students in translanguaging pedagogy, it did not address strategic approaches used by students. In order to understand how collaborative meaning-making occurs in the classroom, a detailed examination of students’ collaborative interactions is needed. The future investigation could analyze students’ responses to the linguistic, identity, and procedural resources that emerge within group interactions. Future work could also take into account other aspects of the classroom environment, such as language policy and its relationship pedagogy, which shape teacher and student participation.
6 Conclusion
Together with translanguaging pedagogy, teachers’ collaborative scaffolding promotes specific types of meaning-making that extend beyond traditional text comprehension. By scaffolding students to translanguage in a multilingual classroom, teachers create a collaborative environment. This environment promises opportunities for EBs to bring their linguistic repertoire into the classroom, affirm their identity, and make meaning from texts. In describing Mr. Chelsea’s scaffolds in translanguaging pedagogy, we hope to illustrate how some aspects of his experiences might be applicable to other settings.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Language and literacy in educational contexts
- Research Articles
- A mixed-methods investigation of third and sixth graders’ academic sentence knowledge
- Meaning-making and collaboration: teacher scaffolds within a translanguaging pedagogy
- Teaching writing to English language learners: two science teachers’ perspectives and practices
- Beyond content: exploring the neglected dimensions of mathematics literacy
- Developing e-reading pedagogies informed by research
- Emotions, positive comparisons, and unexamined assumptions in novice U.S. teachers’ perspectives on English learners
- Language and the mind: how language shapes our thinking
- Book Reviews
- Lay Hoon Seah, Rita Elaine Silver & Mark Charles Baildon: The role of language in content pedagogy: A framework for teachers’ knowledge
- María Estela Brisk & Mary J. Schleppegrell: Language in action: SFL theory across contexts
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Language and literacy in educational contexts
- Research Articles
- A mixed-methods investigation of third and sixth graders’ academic sentence knowledge
- Meaning-making and collaboration: teacher scaffolds within a translanguaging pedagogy
- Teaching writing to English language learners: two science teachers’ perspectives and practices
- Beyond content: exploring the neglected dimensions of mathematics literacy
- Developing e-reading pedagogies informed by research
- Emotions, positive comparisons, and unexamined assumptions in novice U.S. teachers’ perspectives on English learners
- Language and the mind: how language shapes our thinking
- Book Reviews
- Lay Hoon Seah, Rita Elaine Silver & Mark Charles Baildon: The role of language in content pedagogy: A framework for teachers’ knowledge
- María Estela Brisk & Mary J. Schleppegrell: Language in action: SFL theory across contexts
