Monolingual Teacher Candidates Promoting Translingualism: A Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices Project

Abstract

This chapter is based on a self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) project that explored the pedagogical practices of a teacher educator and the impact of such practices on a teacher candidate engaged in the process of becoming a translingual teacher. This S-STEP study includes David, a professor in a teacher education program in the greater New York City metropolitan area, and Mary, a teacher candidate enrolled in the program. The purpose of the study was to discover how different class activities influenced the philosophical and pedagogical views of one teacher candidate in the program. The following are the two research questions of the study:

1. How did the class experiences that a teacher education professor, David, designed help teacher candidates conceptualize translingual approach to language and literacy development?

2. How did a monolingual teacher candidate, Mary, develop her role as a translingual English teacher through the completion of these experiences?

The findings of this S-STEP project demonstrate that the Sociocultural Reflection, the Community Study, and the Linguistic Landscape fostered a translingual approach to language and literacy in the classroom. Moreover, the findings suggest that upon the completion of the projects, one teacher education candidate was able to better define translingualism as a phenomenon of study, ideology, and pedagogy.

Since this investigation is based on a S-STEP project of a single teacher educator and a single teacher candidate, more research with larger populations is needed. Practical implications for teacher educators and teacher candidates in other settings are explored.

Citation

Schwarzer, D. and Fuchs, M. (2014), "Monolingual Teacher Candidates Promoting Translingualism: A Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices Project", Research on Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 89-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720140000021003