[Webinar] CACTI: A survey on what constitutes translanguaging in different K-12 classrooms worldwide

COVID or no COVID, all countries express a desire for development, modernity, and human capital, while English is (mis-)recognized as key to acquiring these “goodies” (Lin, 2016, p. 1). Therefore, all over the world, subject content is sometimes taught to K-12 students, called Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), in English. In these classes, students and teachers translanguage: they use their whole language repertoires to learn and navigate the social life of the class (García & Li, 2014). However, what specific practices constitute translanguaging, in different EAL–CLIL classrooms around the world, given geographic location, subject taught, age group, linguistic composition of the class, and language repertoire of the teacher, is the question this survey-in-progress aims to answer. The researchers, two translanguaging scholars and a quantitative methods scholar, have mapped the different theorized translanguaging practices in education onto the items of the survey (CLIL outcomes, metalinguistic awareness, critical discourse awareness, pedagogic translanguaging, student-initiated translanguaging, bilingual pedagogy, plurilingual pedagogy, text-to-oral scaffolding, and oral-to-text scaffolding), and welcome feedback on both the survey’s conceptualization and the relevance of a large-scale survey to the field of translanguaging, which has mostly involved qualitative research.

Dr. Anna Mendoza (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong) studies bi/multilingualism in K-12 schools and enjoys sharing findings for practice through academic papers and blogging.  She has taught pre- and in-service teachers in Hong Kong, the U.S., and Canada, and her current graduate students research language and identity in education, English for Academic Purposes, and intercultural communication.