Meaning-making and collaboration: teacher scaffolds within a translanguaging pedagogy

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.

Keywords

• collaboration
• emergent bilinguals
• meaning-making
• scaffolds
• translanguaging