[Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

[Peter Sayer]

Ofelia Garcia's (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21 Century is a good comprehensive text and has a clear explanation of translanguaging, though as Anne Marie mentions the concept is being used in many ways recently, and also harkens back to earlier bilingual approaches to bilingual ed such as Jacobson's (1980s) "New Concurrent" approach which advocated the teacher's use of purposeful and strategic language mixing.

About the positioning of above-below vs. side-to-side: I'm not aware of any work on this specific aspect of language positioning, but would say from a (1) linguistic perspective, it makes good sense to put a particular sentence in one language above another so that students can more clearly see how syntactic and lexical elements line up.  However, from a (2) language valorization perspective, the problem the observer may have had was not above-below per se, but rather that English was positioned ABOVE Spanish, which may be seen as implicitly reinforcing the subordinate position of the minoritized language.  In that case, positioning the languages side by side represents them on more equal footing (or even use above/below, but put Spanish on top).  Or maybe the observer was just being cranky... but kudos to the teacher for taking the critique seriously and following up.

- peter.-

From: <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of anne marie devlin <anne_mariedevlin at hotmail.com<mailto:anne_mariedevlin at hotmail.com>>
Reply-To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Date: Monday, April 18, 2016 at 9:04 AM
To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Subject: Re: [Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

Miriam

Current research is coming out strongly in favour of 'translanguaging' where code switching is seen as a benefit to learners rather than a sign of lack of acquisition.
I'm not at my desk and don't have access to references at the moment, but a google search should bring up some interesting findings to support your colleagues approach.

Hope that helps

Anne Marie

________________________________
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 07:29:35 -0500
From: mee1 at nyu.edu<mailto:mee1 at nyu.edu>
To: francis.hult at englund.lu.se<mailto:francis.hult at englund.lu.se>; edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>
Subject: [Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

Dear Colleagues,

A grad of one of our programs is a bilingual (Spanish) social studies teacher in New York City, with 11 years of teaching experience.

The teacher received a super-critical review of a class observation from somebody outside the school who observed a single lesson. The observer knew nothing in advance about the teacher's curriculum or approach; there had been no communication with the teacher in advance of the observation.  After having written a scathing observation report, the observer refused to have a conversation with the teacher, who sought politely to explain their perspective and try to understand better the nature of the critique.

The teacher has requested input on one issue in particular:
At the top of the lesson, the teacher had written a guiding question in English with the Spanish version directly underneath.

The teacher, as I understand it, sought to have the students first try to understand the text in English, then read it in Spanish, and using all linguistic resources make meaning out of the question. (And ultimately, the students will be tested in English.)

One of the many criticisms in the observation report was that the English and Spanish versions should have appeared side by side rather than one above the other. The teacher is perplexed.

While the teacher's explanation makes sense to me, I have been asked whether there is any objective guidance available from the research on best practices to advocate for EITHER of the 2 approaches (2 languages side by side versus one above the other).

Thank you in advance for sharing your perspective. I'll pass it on.

Sincerely,
Miriam

Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, PhD
Dir. of PhD & Post-MA Programs in Multilingual Multicultural Studies
NYU Steinhardt,
316 East Building
New York, NY 10003

Research Editor: Journal of Writing and Pedagogy
Chair, NABE Research SIG Advisory Board
Co-chair, ELL Think Tank

office phone: (212) 998-5195
office fax: (212) 995-3636




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