"Translanguaging in ECE, a project designed to create safe environments where children can feel proud of their identity, express their ideas in multilingual and multimodal ways while making meaning of their world.”
Challenges while implementing translanguaging
Power Hierarchies and Educational Policies​
In a world where powerful hierarchies try to take control over the world, injustices and imbalances arise (Seltzer, Ascenzi-Moreno & Aponte, 2020). These invisible forces have so much strength that they can impact mindsets, ideologies, and even the second language learning field. For the past years, educational policies have been fostering these hierarchies by favoring the acquisition of some languages on top of others (Li, 2018; Otheguy et al, 2015). The English language has spread everywhere threatening minoritized languages, but it is still not too late to shift the way in which we teach languages. Hopefully, by " ... exposing children to diverse languages and cultures at an early age allows them to grow in the cultural understanding and communicative competence required to thrive in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world." (Cohelo, & Ortega, 2020 p. 146).
If policymakers change their perspective and create policies through a more pluralistic and translanguaging view they will promote cultural diversity in schools, letting the children communicate in multilingual and multimodal ways. But in reality, at least in the majority of countries around the world it is not happening. (Cohelo & Ortega, 2020). Therefore, I invite schools to think beyond and start a bottom-top revolution by creating safe spaces inside schools where young children can be in touch with multiple cultures and languages to solidify their multilingual identities.
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Moving away from the monolingual bias
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Another big challenge that translanguaging, faces is the monolingual bias (Cohelo, & Ortega, 2020; Li, 2018; Otheguy et al, 2015; Morell, Z. & Lopez, D. 2021; Seltzer, Ascenzi-Moreno & Aponte, 2020). According to the previous academics, most of the western cultures assess success in the acquisition of named languages in relation to reaching the 'native level' of proficiency. As a consequence, educators tend to see students from the lens of deficit focusing on what they do not have, rather than embracing all the resources they already have inside their repertoire, but worst of all, sometimes teachers can even tag their students as semilingual’ (Cummins 1994) or ‘languageless’ (Rosa 2016) or'nilingues' (meaning not being proficient in any language at all) if they are not proficient in the target languages of the schools. (Seltzer, Ascenzi-Moreno & Aponte, 2020). It is time to reeducate people with the invitation to value people for who they are, not by the potentiality they have to achieve a goal target language.
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But what does it imply to move away from the monolingual bias at schools?
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- Share the benefits of translanguaging with the whole community: parents, students, teachers, school administrators, janitors, etc. so everyone can participate and co-create in building a multicultural environment.
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- Hire teachers that align with the multilingual and multimodal bias, rather than teachers with 'the perfect accent' or belonging to the 'native speakers' category. If not posible, consider providing teacher training that, with time, can allow teachers shift their perspectives.
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- Include multiple languages in most of the school practices.
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- Consider reviewing the ways in which students are being assessed, weighting more the messages they to convey, rather than achieving specific goals expected from everyone in the same grade level.
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Finding multilingual resources
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Even though it can be hard to find the perfect materials for your schools, you can always promote PLC (professional learning communities) among the staff or even invite parents to create the resources that children are demanding. By relying on technology and others' repertoires you can find infinite possibilities to address this challenge.
References
Coelho D. & Ortega Y. (2020) Pluralistic Approaches in Early Language Education: Shifting Paradigms in Language Didactics. In Lau S., Van Viegen S. (Eds) Plurilingual Pedagogies. Educational Linguistics, vol 42. Springer, Cham.
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Li, W. (2018) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 9–30.
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Lindquist, H., & Garmann, N. G. (2019). Toddlers and their translingual practicing homes. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1-14.
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Morell, Z. & Lopez, D. (2021) Translanguaging and Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood Education. In O. Garcia (Ed.) Translanguaging and transformative teaching for emergent bilingual students : lessons from the CUNY-NYSIEB Project, pp. 149-150. Routledge
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Ortega, Y. (2017, July). Valuing plurilingualism in the early years: Shifting the paradigms in early language education. Paper presented at the AILA (International association of applied linguistics) world congress, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281–307
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Seltzer K., Ascenzi-Moreno L., Aponte G.Y. (2020) Translanguaging and Early Childhood Education in the USA: Insights from the CUNY-NYSIEB Project. In: Panagiotopoulou J., Rosen L., Strzykala J. (eds) Inclusion, Education and Translanguaging. Inklusion und Bildung in Migrationsgesellschaften. Springer VS, Wiesbaden.
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