The shift toward learner-centered pedagogy has been a moving force in changing how learning and teaching are viewed in many regions of the world, with international organizations such as the Council of Europe (2018) promoting learner-centered pedagogy in the quest to deliver quality language education.Despite this emphasis on individual students and their needs, we argue here that when teachers are confronted with a significantly different population of language learners, what they think students need and want, however well-intentioned, is not necessarily correct. Instead, it is often the case that teachers are viewing these students through a particular paradigm of learning, i.e., that of formal education. This learning paradigm, however, is not that of students with limited or interrupted prior formal education who have not been able to engage in age-appropriate formal education, leading to the development of a vastly different learning paradigm. Thus, these learners experience considerable challenges when confronted with Western-style formal educational models based on academic ways of learning, reading, and writing (e.g., Hopkins et al., 2013).
Nevertheless, these learners, while not accustomed to literacy-based ways of learning and meaning-making, do possess strong oral skills, often in multiple languages and/or dialect (Vinogradov, 2010; Watson, 2019). By leveraging these oral skills, teachers move away from a deficit approach to asset-based learning to build these learners' literacy skills as well as foster successful second language learning. Yet, despite a growing body of work on the benefits of translanguaging, significant hurdles remain in effective implementation.
In this presentation, we explore the results of our interview study of instructors of German as a Second Language integration courses for adult migrants (n=11). Our goal was to investigate the beliefs and self-reported practices of the teachers toward translanguaging in their classrooms. We examine how while some spontaneous translanguaging takes place, pedagogical translanguaging is not embedded in the classroom, thereby leaving the multilingual oral assets of SLIFE mostly overlooked and underutilized. We explore the explicit and implicit assumptions expressed by participants, including beliefs about second language acquisition and questions of power and identity, as well as systemic top-down constraints of curriculum, learning materials, and assessment requirements.
Bibliography
Council of Europe. (2018). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion Volume with New Descriptors.Council of Europe.
Hopkins, M., Martinez-Wenzl, M., Aldana, U., Gándara, P. (2013). Cultivating capital: Latino Newcomer Young men in a U.S. urban high school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 44(3), 286-303.
Ngaka, W., Openjuru, G., & Mazur, R. E. (2012). Formal and non-formal education in Uganda: The quest for recognition and integration of the diverse learning options for sustainable livelihoods. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities & Nations 11 (6), 109–121.
Vinogradov, P. (August 2010). Using oral language skills to build on the emerging literacy of adult English learners. CAELA Network Brief.
Watson, J. (2019). Understanding indigenous education practices as a way of engaging deeply with refugee-background students (and everyone else) in the classroom.European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL,8(1), 203–224.
