1,720,961 research outputs found
Supporting teacher dispositions towards translanguaging-for-learning in a Grade 9 mathematics classroom
Get PDFBackground: Our article argues that the role of translingual instruction in mathematics classrooms is under-recognised in South Africa, as policymakers, teacher educators, teachers, learners, and parents assume that mathematics is just about numbers and calculations and not language. This is despite findings on the value of using children’s familiar language resources in MacDonald (1991), code-switching for meaning-making in mathematics and science learning by Setati et al. (2002) and Probyn (2015), and the findings by Mbude (2019) on using isiXhosa for boosting mathematical and science skills.
Objectives: The main aim of our article is to examine the role of the Languaging-for-Learning (L4L) project in fostering ‘supportive teacher dispositions’ to translanguaging and bilingual and multilingual education. We will accomplish this aim through description and analysis of one Grade 8 and Grade 9 mathematics teacher and her learners who participated in the project.
Method: The study is a qualitative and interpretive linguistic ethnographic case study of a Grade 8 and Grade 9 mathematics teacher. The researchers used ethnographic methods to collect data and primarily draw on data transcribed from one of the video recordings of a lesson, fieldnotes of their classroom observations and still photographs from their classroom visits and L4L workshops. They used discourse analysis to interpret the data.
Results: The research findings point to the critical role that fostering supportive teacher dispositions to translanguaging can play in teacher development and in supporting learners’ engagement and learning in multilingual mathematics classrooms.
Contribution: Our contribution to the field has been in demonstrating pluriversality in mathematics classrooms, showing how translanguaging enhances meaning-making and participation and helps to give voice to learners.
Conclusion: Having multilingual resources, collaboratively building knowledge and resources and team teaching with teachers played a role in supporting the teacher’s development in pedagogical translanguaging
Crossing the frontier from oral to written translanguaging for epistemic access in natural science
Get PDFBackground: South Africa’s Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) provides for bi/multilingual education, but schools are only supported to choose monolingual English language policies from Grade 4 and ignore the learners’ home language or languages as resources for learning. Many teachers translanguage orally, using the learners’ home language and English to make learning more meaningful but seldom extend this to written translanguaging.
Objectives: Research was conducted to document the process and effects of a teacher development project, translanguaging-for-learning (L4L) which supported teachers in developing translanguaging pedagogies to improve learner access to the curriculum and to develop academic bi-literacy.
Method: This article focuses on the development of one senior phase (Grades 7–9) natural science teacher who participated in the L4L project. Data were collected following an ethnographic approach in workshops and classrooms through observation, interviews, photos, videos, and learners’ workbooks.
Results: The research illustrates how with workshop engagement, mentoring support and the provision of multilingual dictionaries, a teacher’s bi/multilingual languaging skills were legitimised and mobilised to engage learners in knowledge construction, both orally and in writing. Classroom interaction shifted from being teacher-led to being more learner-centred and bilingual, providing opportunities for biliteracy, and identity affirmation.
Conclusion: The findings illustrate improved learning opportunities through planned, systematic translanguaging pedagogies.
Contribution: The research suggests a model for bi/multilingual education and teacher development that recognises African languages as important resources for learning to further linguistic equity, access, and social justice
Moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries in the education of African Language speaking children: A case for simultaneous biliteracy development
Get PDFLanguage policy debates in South Africa concern only Black African language speaking children rather than White English and Afrikaans speaking children. These debates construct Black African children as learners with deficits and fail to acknowledge their language resources. At the same time, policy makers fail to critique the unjust system to which they are subjected and of which they are victims. In this paper, I present a brief case study of children belonging to the Stars of Today Literacy Club to show the possibilities and ways in which these children are positioned as competent multilinguals and, in so doing, can resist the prevailing deficit view. The paper has three key aims: 1) to bring to light the racist ideology behind the current implementation of language policy, showing the specific ways in which, it constructs African language speaking children as inherently different from English and Afrikaans speaking children, evidenced by the fact that English and Afrikaans language speakers’ medium is not even debated: eventually, English becomes the preferred language of instruction from Grade 4 onwards. 2) To describe how inequality is thus created and entrenched through undifferentiated language in education policies, curriculum, textbooks, and assessments, all of which are based on the unexamined idea of the child being a middle-class English-speaking child. 3) to demonstrate how bilingual children can be positioned as capable, rather than deficient, through hybrid language and literacy practices
16 Emerging Academics: Using WhatsApp to Share Novice and Expert Resources in a Postgraduate Writing Group
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Languaging-for-learning: Legitimising translanguaging and enabling multimodal practices in third spaces
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