Event information

Pedagogical Translanguaging in Adult Education: From Detective to Transformer

Tuesday 26th November 2024, 16:00 - 17:00 (GMT)

This event is supported by the Language, Literacies and Education Network (LLEN).

Venue – Online.

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About the event

This presentation is based on a study conducted at an adult education centre in Norway, in three highly diverse classes, to demonstrate some of the potential of pedagogical translanguaging (García, 2017; García & Li Wei, 2014). The research design followed an ethnographic evaluation approach (De Korne & Hornberger, 2017), involving cycles of identifying current issues, implementing with participant observation, and evaluating with five teachers over the course of a year.

The data includes field notes, video and audio recordings of both in-person and online teaching, meeting recordings, artifacts, and interviews with students, assistants, teachers, and a school leader. A shared goal was to facilitate translanguaging for students with varying access to others with similar linguistic backgrounds.

In this presentation, Professor Joke Dewilde will particularly focus on the teachers’ roles as detectives, co-learners, builders, and transformers within pedagogical translanguaging (García, 2017). They found that teachers changed their practice over the course of the project, for instance by drawing on students’ complex repertoires and experiences. At the same time, they also encountered resistance, such as when teachers maintained a focus on form-based instruction and were reluctant to engage with societal issues affecting students’ daily lives. Prof Joke Dewilde will argue that the implementation of pedagogical translanguaging is not only about building on students’ previous practices and experiences, but should also address the social realities that adult immigrants live in.