Translanguaging as pedagogy? Adrian Blackledge University of Birmingham [email protected] ESRC Seminar Series: Complementary Schools: Research,

Translanguaging as pedagogy?

Adrian BlackledgeUniversity of Birmingham

[email protected]

ESRC Seminar Series: Complementary Schools: Research, Policy and PracticeGoldsmiths and King’s College London

Final Conference on Complementary SchoolingSaturday December 4th 2010

Project Details

• Four interlinking case studies

– Gujarati schools in Leicester, – Turkish schools in London, – Cantonese and Mandarin schools in Manchester – Bengali schools in Birmingham

• Complementary Schools– Community-run– Voluntary– Weekends and after school– Serving specific linguistic, religious and cultural groups through

community language classes

Research aims

• To explore the social, cultural and linguistic significance of complementary schools both within their communities and in wider society

• To investigate the range of linguistic practices used in the different contexts in the complementary schools

• To investigate how the linguistic practices of students and teachers in complementary schools are used to negotiate young people’s multilingual and multicultural identities.

Design

• Ethnographically informed observation in schools• Team field notes: 133 sets of fieldnotes representing 399 hours of

fieldwork• Digital audio recording of pupils and teachers: 192 hours of audio-

recorded interactional data• Digital video recording of pupils and teachers: 16 hours of video-recorded

interactional data• Interviews with 66 key stakeholders • ‘Border crossings’• Documentary evidence

Superdiversity

Many parts of the world are now characterised by ‘superdiversity’, distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among multiple-origin, transnationally connected migrants

(Vertovec 2006, 2009)

New forms of multilingualism emerge that defy dominant understandings of multilingualism as the ordered deployment of different languages

Language separation

Bilingual educators have usually insisted on the separation of the two languages, one of which is English and the other, the child’s vernacular. By strictly separating the languages, the teacher avoids, it is argued, cross contamination, thus making it easier for the child to acquire a new linguistic system as he/she internalizes a given lesson. . . . it was felt that the inappropriateness of the concurrent use was so self-evident that no research had to be conducted to prove this fact.

(Jacobson and Faltis, 1990:4)

Bilingualism as ‘double monolingualism’

• ‘Parallel monolingualism’ (Heller, 1999)• ‘Bilingualism with diglossia’ (Baker, 2003; Fishman, 1967) • ‘Bilingualism through monolingualism’ (Swain, 1983:4) • ‘Two solitudes’ (Cummins, 2005)• ‘Two monolinguals in one body’ (Gravelle, 1996:11).

Attitudes to codeswitching

• Feeling ‘embarrassed about codeswitching’ and ‘attributing it to careless language habits’ (Shin 2005)

• Codeswitching is often lambasted as ‘bad practice’, blamed on teachers’ lack of English-language competence, or put to one side and/or swept under the carpet (Martin, 2005:88)

Separate bilingualism

• Tűrçe Konuş – <speak Turkish>

• Bangla-e maato – <speak Bangla>

• 講中文 (Gong Chong man) <speak Chinese (Cantonese) >

• 说普通话 / 说华语 (Shuo Putonghua/ Shuo Huayu) <speak Chinese (Mandarin)>

• Gujaratima < in Gujarati!>

Language(s) and boundaries

• Flexible bilingualism (Creese and Blackledge, 2010)

• Translanguaging (García, 2009)

• Heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981; Bailey, 2007)

• Truncated multilingualism (Blommaert 2009)

• Polylingualism (Jørgensen 2008)

• Plurilingualism (Canagarajah, 2009)

• Codemeshing (Canagarajah, 2005; Young 2004)

• Heterolingualism (Pratt 2010)

• Metrolingualism (Pennycook 2010)

Everyday linguistic practices

Rumana: [singing along to music] rock your body, rock your body, rock your body, rock your body, tumhare bina <without you> chaenna aaye <there’s no peace> rock your body

(home audio-recording, Bengali case study)

Aleha: Rumana, come on. I’m going amma, salam alaikum <mother, salam alaikum >

salam alaikum abba, zaairam aami <salam alaikum father. I’m going>

The Bengali classroom

S1: miss why can’t we just go homeT: Bangla-e maato etaa Bangla class

<speak Bangla this is Bangla class> khaali English maato to etaa Bangla class khene <if you speak in English only then why is this the Bangla class?>

S2: miss you can chooseS1: I know EnglishS2: why?T: because tumi Bangali <because you are Bengali>S2: my aunty chose it she speaks English all the timeS1: yeah miss I’m not gonna come back, not for any more, watch

miss (classroom recording Bengali school)

Languaging and negotiation

PB: bolwanu <speak>Ss: shu bolwanu? <speak what?>PB: je discuss karyu hoi <what you discussed>Ss: oh… [chat]…etle we discuss it and then decide what we gonna

say…miss ame ek bijanu kaie ke ek ek <so we discuss it….miss, do we speak about each other or one by one>

PB: tame decide karo ke kone bolwu chhe < you decide who speaks>

[PB allocates more topics to pairs while Ss chat among themselves]

Ss: mane doctor banwu chhe…I don’t really want to be a doctor…sorry I do want to be a doctor, actually I don’t mind being a doctor…I want to be…you know for the kiddie ones… [chat]… paediatrician… karanke nana chhokra manda pade to sara karwani dawa apwi chhe. <I want to be a doctor…when little children are ill, I want to give them medicines to make them better…> Your turn, what do you want to be?

T: chalo, tame taiyar chho? [talks to other Ss] ek... diwas…chalo…. < come on, are you ready?…one day…come on…>S: what? we’re still writing…we have written that much [shows book to PB]. Not much,

is it?T: shena upper banawi chhe? < what is it about?>S: kootro ane wandro < dog and the monkey>T: kootro ne wandro? Shu banawi chhe warta? < dog and the monkey? What story have you made?>S: they make friends and they go outT: be mitro chhe ane- < they are two friends and ->S: they are going outT: e bai mitro chhe, kootro ne wandro ne bai farwa jay chhe < they are both friends and they go out (for a walk)>S: they are going outT: kya farwa jay? <where do they go?>S: junglema < in the jungle>T: junglema, wandrabhai junglema jai shake? <in the jungle, can the monkey go into the jungle?>S: no, they are going out [laugh] T: sssh! Pachhi shu thyu? < then what happened?>

B: hello, hello, PC1661 [1661 in Cantonese] 你的學校叫做什麽？<what’s your school called?>

Ss: [chatting, very noisily. A boy picks up the recorder and speaks into it]

B: 曼城僑‘嘜嘜’華人子弟學校比人偷了一 個白色的錢銀東東。

佢就唔知邊個偷咗。現在就搜。。搜。。搜書包， <someone stole a white money box, something from Manchester City

Chinese descendents school. we don’t know who stole it. now, we have to search … search … search school bags> 請你派 <please send> Spiderman 和 <and> Batman 來救我們<to rescue us> thank you bye-bye

(classroom audio-recording, Cantonese school)

Bilingualism is not simply two separate monolingual codes, nor are languages bounded autonomous systems (García 2009:5)

we should put at the centre people as actors who signify differently by performing different language practices (García 2010:532)

‘The question is whether the type of spontaneous negotiation of languages that we see in face to face conversations can be taught in the somewhat constrained context of the classroom’ (Canagarajah & Liyanage, forthcoming)

Translanguaging pedagogy in the Panjabi classroom

• Transliteration: a practical strategy in contexts where the written form of a language is unfamiliar or does not otherwise exist (Al-Azami, Kenner, Mahera and Gregory, 2010)

• Translation: bilingual label quests; repetition and translation across languages

• Translanguaging: multiple discursive practices in interrelationship (Garcia 2009). Drawing on the totality of verbal resources available, translanguaging goes beyond code-switching but incorporates it

Investigating discourses of inheritance and identity in four multilingual European settings

Developing pedagogies which reflect practice

What we need is a paradigm shift in language teaching. Pedagogy should be refashioned to accommodate the modes of communication and acquisition seen outside the classroom. . . (Canagarajah, 2009:210)

In the twenty-first century we are aware of the linguistic complexity of the world, in which monolingual schooling seems utterly inappropriate. Language differences are a resource, and bilingual education in all its complexity and forms seems to be the only way to educate as the world moves forward (García, 2009:16)

It is essential for language educators to fill up implementational spaces with multilingual educational practices in the face of restrictive policies (Hornberger 2005:606)

Translanguaging as pedagogy?

• Translanguaging as/for identity

• Translanguaging in use

• Translanguaging as medium of instruction

• Translanguaging in teacher education

• Translanguaging as ‘target language’