Sustainable translanguaging pedagogy in support of the vulnerable language: honoring children’s ways of ‘Showing’ and ‘Telling’ in an early childhood dual language bilingual education program

Abstract

Show-and-Tell activity provides emergent bilingual (EB) children with an opportunity to engage oral language skills to support their developing bi/literacy. In dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool programs, teachers utilize translanguaging practices to facilitate communication, scaffold learning, and encourage participation. Using a sustainable translanguaging lens, we explore English- and Spanish-language model teachers' pedagogical choices in Show-and-Tell in support of children's Show-and-Tell purposes and practices. Video data were analyzed for discourse- and content-related codes to examine teachers' discursive and translanguaging choices and presenters' languaging practices during Show-and-Tell. Qualitative analyses revealed that teachers' translanguaging choices vary in response to the language context (i.e. teacher's designated language of instruction and the target language of the Show-and-Tell) and to children's languaging practices (i.e. choice of language, amount of unprompted talk, purpose of presentation, degree of peer involvement). Given the vulnerable status of Spanish as the minoritized language in an English-majority culture, teachers sustained the use and modeling of Spanish in Spanish Show-and-Tell while integrating Spanish as a supportive resource in English Show-and-Tell. Findings suggest implications for how teachers can protect minoritized languages within DLBE preschool programs while valuing children's authentic translanguaging practices and building on children's understanding language functions and forms in each language.