by Caitlin G Fine and Melissa Braaten, November 2021

Students bring their heterogeneous linguistic and cultural practices to schools across the United States every day. There is increasing consensus that teachers should invite, acknowledge, take up, and sustain these practices as important for school-based sensemaking and learning (Paris and Alim 2017). Science offers a unique space within which to focus on expanding equitable sensemaking opportunities for bi/multilingual learners because all students bring hunches about mechanisms—ideas about how and why things happen—that are valuable resources for making sense of scientific phenomena. Those ideas should be validated and elevated as critical for whole-group sensemaking.

Who Are Emergent Bi/Multilingual Learners?

We use the term emergent bi/multilingual to refer to students, such as Victoria, who have traditionally been labeled by national policy documents English language learners (ELLs) or English learners (ELs). The term emergent bi/multilingual offers an asset-oriented approach by focusing on the bilingualism students bring to their classrooms rather than focusing on what students might lack or need to develop more fully in order to participate equitably in the learning environment, such as English language proficiency (García and Kleifgen 2010). Many teachers want to learn more about how to invite and take up students' ideas when those ideas are expressed in languages other than English. This is especially pronounced among teachers who identify as monolingual English-speakers themselves.

Translanguaging

Translanguaging offers teachers a useful framework for thinking about emergent bi/multilingual students' linguistic repertoire. Translanguaging describes the dynamic language practices of bi/multilingual individuals who decide when and how to draw from their holistic and unique linguistic resources depending on the social context (Otheguy, García and Reid 2015). For example, in schools with de facto English-only language policies and practices, many emergent bi/multilingual students make a daily decision not to publicly display their bi/multilingualism for fear of getting into trouble or because experience tells them that their ideas will not count within the classroom.

Translanguaging: A Pedagogical Approach

Translanguaging also describes the pedagogical approach whereby teachers purposely invite, validate, and incorporate emergent bi/multilingual students' heterogeneous languaging practices for sensemaking.

For example, teachers can explicitly plan and create opportunities for students to translanguage as a way to build a bridge from students' dynamic home and community languaging practices to the language practices used in formal school environments (Flores and Schissel 2014). This includes explicitly planning opportunities for students to use intra-personal (inner voice), inter-personal (peers), and external (dictionaries, books, Internet, etc.) resources.

Translanguaging pedagogies are important for equitable teaching and learning because they support students' bilingual/multilingual identities and socioemotional development and make space for students' bilingualism/multilingualism and ways of knowing (García, Johnson, Seltzer and Valdés 2017). Additionally, translanguaging pedagogies support students as they engage with and comprehend complex content and texts and they provide opportunities for students to develop linguistic practices for academic contexts.

Incorporating Translanguaging Pedagogies into Science Classrooms

Science learning experiences provide multiple opportunities to incorporate translanguaging and other culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies into the classroom. For instance, as students first encounter an anchoring phenomenon for an upcoming science unit, teachers can employ routines for talking with partners that make space for students to use their entire language repertoire like Victoria did in Ms. Archibald's third grade classroom.

Similarly, when students collaborate in small groups, teachers can encourage students to generate representations of their thinking through drawings, physical models, short videos, and/or writing so students' contributions are captured across languages and modalities. For example, students in Ms. Archibald's classroom frequently created diagrams showing how processes happen over time. Later, students in Ms. Archibald's classroom added annotations to diagrams by layering sticky notes on top of their own and others' work with words, ideas, and questions written in multiple languages.

When science learning experiences are focused on observing, investigating, modeling, and explaining real-world phenomena, students contribute to collective sensemaking through multiple languages, representations, and modalities. Incorporating translanguaging and culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies into science classrooms requires that teachers advocate for more expansive curriculum, instruction, and assessment policies in their schools and push back against de facto English-only policies and practices.

Lessons Learned about Incorporating Translanguaging into Science Classrooms

• Group emergent bi/multilingual students by like-languages to support science sensemaking through translanguaging.
• It is important for teachers to demonstrate their own emerging fluid bi/multilingual practices. This includes teachers' publicly working to learn and try out questions, invitations, and frequently used sentences in the languages spoken by students in the classroom community for science sensemaking.
• Create space for emergent bi/multilingual students to elevate and validate each other by interpreting bi/multilingual science ideas for the larger group.
• Design multimodal lessons that allow students to demonstrate science sensemaking to a specific audience (family, community members, classmates) through a variety of communication modes (speech, different genres of writing, drawing, physical movement, etc.).
• Be sure to bring translanguaging into assessment designs and assessment practices so that teachers can see a more nuanced picture of what students know and can do in science on assignments that matter.

Resources to Get Started

To get started supporting sensemaking in science with bi/multilingual students in collaboration with science teachers or within school library instruction, we recommend checking out professional learning resources about translanguaging pedagogies, such as The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning and translanguaging assessment designs, such as the SAEBL Checklist. Professional learning communities can pair these texts with a resource such as Ambitious Science Teaching and Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education to build and refine teaching practices that position emergent bi/multilingual students as full participants whose contributions are vital for making sense of science with their peers.

Works Cited and Further Reading

Brown, Bryan A. Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education. Harvard Education Press, 2021.

Fine, Caitlin Gailey McClearyCale, and Erin Marie Furtak. "The SAEBL Checklist: Science Classroom Assessments that Work for Emergent Bilingual Learners." The Science Teacher 89, no. 9 (2020): 38-48. https://www.nsta.org/science-teacher/science-teacher-julyaugust-2020/saebl-checklist.

Flores, Nelson, and Jamie L. Schissel. "Dynamic Bilingualism as the Norm: Envisioning A Heteroglossic Approach to Standards-Based Reform." Tesol Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2014): 454-479.

García, Ofelia, Susana Ibarra Johnson, Kate Seltzer, and Guadalupe Valdés. The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Caslon, 2017.

Paris, Django and H. Samy Alim (Eds.). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. Teachers College Press, 2017.

Windschitl, Mark, Jessica Thompson, and Melissa Braaten. Ambitious Science Teaching. Harvard Education Press, 2018.