Bienvenidos a la conversación: Examinations of translanguaging across science and engineering education research

Abstract

In May 2023, the three of us met with Professor Emerita Ofelia García to share our goals for this Special Issue. Given her expertise in translanguaging, we asked if she would contribute a closing commentary. Noting our admiration of her and her colleagues' work over the past decade (García, 2011; García & Kleyn, 2016; García & Li, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015) and the ways it has impacted our thinking and areas of research, Dr. García humbly expressed, “All I have done in my work is to describe what I have seen and observed as a way to deconstruct what others have done before.” Mirroring her seemingly simple, yet powerful statement, our vision for this Special Issue is to foster space for critical conversations within our frequently siloed disciplinary communities, where scholars can share observations they have made as a means to decolonize, and transform perspectives around language and the experiences of language-minoritized individuals in science and engineering education (García et al., 2021; Takeuchi et al., 2022). Further, in response to the increased interest in and uptake of translanguaging theory and pedagogy in STEM education research (e.g., Jakobsson et al., 2021; Pérez et al., 2022), this Special Issue was born out of our desire to understand whether there is—or could be and/or should be—consensus around what it means to engage in translanguaging practices, frameworks, and scholarship in science and engineering education.

The manuscripts in this Special Issue capture the different and robust ways in which translanguaging as theory and as pedagogy have been taken up by science and engineering researchers and educators from around the world who are working across grade levels and learning environments. From high school science classrooms in the Midwestern US (Bonilla & Morales-Doyle, this issue) to out-of-school science programs for refugees in Lebanon (Salloum, Debs, & BouJaoude, this issue) to kindergartners in Luxembourg (Siry, Wilmes, & Sportelli, this issue), these articles invite us to reckon with science and engineering education from a perspective that centers what individuals from language-minoritized backgrounds are capable of doing, figuring out, and understanding when their language-related resources and practices are viewed in expansive ways (González-Howard et al., 2023). In particular, the manuscripts highlight the brilliance and experiences of individuals who identify, or are identified, as multilingual because they use multiple named languages (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin) in addition to English (González-Howard & Suárez, 2021), or as multidialectal because they use multiple varieties of the same named language (e.g., African American Vernacular English, Black English, Garifuna, and Caribbean Spanglish) (Baker-Bell, 2020; Degraff, 2005; García et al., 2024; Rickford, 2007). Aiming to foster learning between scholars, this Special Issue brings researchers into conversación, encouraging us to consider and reflect upon different conceptualizations of translanguaging and the ways they are being taken up across disciplinary spaces.

For the sake of clarity around how the three of us enter la conversación, we take a moment to present a definition of translanguaging from its origins within bi/multilingual education that aligns with our definition of this construct, and then share how we think the construct can contribute to realizing equitable science and engineering education. For the purposes of this Special Issue, we broadly define translanguaging as the deployment of a bi/multilingual speaker's full semiotic repertoire—which includes multimodal, multisensory, and multilingual elements—without regard for the socially and politically constructed boundaries of named languages, registers, and/or modalities. From this perspective, translanguaging asks researchers and educators to develop expansive perspectives on how minoritized individuals use language, for instance, to make meaning, interact socially, and achieve goals with others. It also asks us to move away from the idea that a bilingual/bidialectal person is made up of two monolinguals wrapped into one (García, 2011; García & Li, 2014). Instead, people have one complex semiotic system (i.e., their idiolect) that comprises multilingual, multimodal, and multisensory dimensions from which they draw upon and use different resources to communicate based on the context they are in (Li, 2018; Otheguy et al., 2015) and their audience (Bell, 2002). Moreover, a translanguaging perspective is inherently political as it questions and pushes back upon socially recognized categories, such as named languages or varieties of those that are privileged, which are intrinsically connected to power structures (e.g., Farsi, Spanish, English, high German), as more legitimate than others. Our conceptualization of translanguaging is not what some call “code-switching” because we, like García and Li (2014), reject the premise that there are codes to switch between. Instead, such moments are evidence of individuals fluidly laminating linguistic resources associated with different named languages to accomplish a specific goal (Suárez, 2020). In the context of science and engineering education, translanguaging can help us extend research and pedagogy that considers and values the heterogeneous nature of how learners share their ideas and engage with each other's thinking (e.g., Rosebery et al., 2010; Warren et al., 2020). Specifically, it offers a theoretical construct and an analytical tool to better study and explain how language-minoritized learners engage in meaning-making and/or design, interact with others, and problem-solve.

In addition to showcasing the different robust approaches to translanguaging, as well as presenting our rationale for why translanguaging is productive for us, we would like to offer some considerations for science and engineering education scholars who are interested in embarking on this kind of work. First, we critically heed caution from our research community about translanguaging theory and pedagogy becoming diluted. And by that, we mean being used as a catch-all phrase with no precise meaning and not being taken up to intentionally disrupt harmful, dominant discourses, ideologies, and practices (García et al., 2021; Li, 2023). We have seen this occur before with other theories and pedagogies that were originally proposed for accomplishing transformative work; as they gain popularity, many of their foundational principles are lost (e.g., culturally relevant, responsive, or sustaining pedagogy; Ladson-Billings, 2021). Proactively addressing this concern, we urged contributing authors of this Special Issue to explicitly define language and languaging (Li, 2018) in their work and to articulate whose language and languaging they examined and why. Moreover, we encouraged authors to situate themselves in their research. Who we are, which includes (but is not limited to) the language resources and practices we use across spaces, time, and with different audiences, influences how we experience the world. And for educational researchers, it impacts how we view, relate to, and make sense of others' language and languaging (Boveda & Annamma, 2023; Martínez & Mesinas, 2019; Ríos & Patel, 2023). Implicating ourselves in this process, we next offer some insight into our positionings related to language and languaging and describe how they affect our research and the work we did with this Special Issue. We then share our takeaways from reading this collection of manuscripts and conclude with suggested questions for readers to keep in mind as they engage with the Special Issue.

As previously noted, it is of utmost importance that we make our positionalities as researchers transparent, especially those of us who work in learning spaces where prevailing power structures minoritize and undervalue/devalue language practices that do not align with those used by white, Western, dominant language-speaking individuals (González-Howard & Suárez, 2021; Takeuchi et al., 2022). Like the authors whose work comprises this Special Issue, the three of us also represent a swath of intersecting identities, lived experiences, and positions of power (or lack thereof), all of which inform how we see the world, how we navigate the world, and how others view and interact with us in and out of academic spaces. This seemed particularly prescient for us to reflect upon, since all three of us contributed equally to the creation, managing, and finalizing of this Special Issue. For this reason, it is critical to situate ourselves in the work we have done, both as guest co-editors of this Special Issue and as researchers who are committed to making science and engineering education more equitable and just, especially for language-minoritized individuals (Pérez, 2022). We do not intend to simply list our identities as markers of so-called “insiders” (Merriam et al., 2001), but rather to wrestle with dynamics of power and knowledge production in relation to ourselves in science and engineering as disciplines and education (Boveda & Annamma, 2023; Martínez & Mesinas, 2019; Ríos & Patel, 2023). Moreover, the three of us have known each other for over a decade. We navigated graduate school and entered the early stages of our careers as faculty within institutions of higher education. Thus, our evolving positionings are informed by who we were, who we have become as individuals and as a collective, and our interactions with the US education system.

Yo, Greses Pérez, am an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education Research at Tufts University, a medium-sized private, Research 1, predominantly white institution in the Northeastern US. My relationship with language and engineering is informed by my experiences as a 1.5-generation Dominican-American, Black Latina, speaker of Caribbean Spanglish, civil engineer, and learning scientist. Most of my STEM professors were male English speakers, who rarely invited the systems of resources and practices of minoritized communities, but throughout my career, I have learned that even within Latinx spaces, the intersectional experiences of Afro and Indigenous Latines are often flattened and invisibilized. Yet, during my time at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez and as a bilingual teacher in Texas, I experienced niche spaces of fogaraté, learning environments where people felt alive through who they were, where their full linguistic and cultural realities were empowered and invited in more than just one language. These rare experiences sparked my curiosity to investigate how people learn engineering in K-16 and how to design inclusive learning environments where people draw on their cultural understandings and language to develop equitable and just engineering solutions (Lemmi & Pérez, 2024; Pérez et al., 2024; Pérez & Marvez, in press; Secules et al., 2023).

I, María González-Howard, am an Associate Professor of STEM Education at The University of Texas at Austin, a large research institution recently designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution. I am a white Latina who was born in Argentina and raised with many linguistic and cultural practices common to that country. Porque hablaba español en casa, my early schooling in the US encompassed ESL programming, which I recall as me being frequently pulled out of class to sit in a small room while wearing headphones and repeating back English words and phrases. Because my early memories of school involved feelings of being incomplete and othered, I strive to ensure multilingual students receive more humane and meaningful experiences in education. My lines of scholarship center supporting teachers in recognizing the brilliant ways multilingual students use their existing and entire language repertoire for science (González-Howard, Andersen, et al., 2024). In particular, I integrate translanguaging theory and praxis in elementary science methods courses to guide monolingual and multilingual preservice teachers in problematizing their language orientations and honoring and supporting multilingual students' language use in science practices (Andersen et al., 2022; González-Howard, Méndez Pérez, & Andersen, 2024).

I, Enrique (Henry) Suárez, am an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, a large Research institution in New England. I am a White Latino, multilingual, heterosexual, cisgender, and nondisabled, and I work to make science learning environments more just through affirming and building on minoritized students' linguistic, epistemic, and cultural resources. My scholarship focuses on how young children use their translanguaging practices to make sense of physical phenomena (e.g., Suárez, 2020; Suárez & Otero, 2024), as well as how to support mono- and multilingual teachers recognize and build on the brilliance of their students' ideas and languaging. Central to this work is my professional experience as a (Western-trained) astrophysicist, which began in my home country of Venezuela, spanned multiple continents, and was built on collaborating with multilingual colleagues. These experiences have pushed me to name and dismantle narrow definitions of what counts as “language of science” in learning environments, especially when these limiting perceptions construe minoritized students as needing fixing.

As translanguaging scholars in STEM education, we are committed to describing what we see in multilingual communities beyond normative conceptions of language or their unitary semiotic systems. Within this commitment lies our desire to transform how language-minoritized students and their teachers learn and participate in science and engineering, fully recognizing that the instructional models in most science and engineering classrooms have ignored, misrecognized, or outright excluded the myriad language practices that multilingual students draw upon for figuring out the world and solving meaningful problems. Throughout our careers, we have seen how the listening practices of people in positions of power (e.g., white listening subjects; Flores & Rosa, 2015) have led them to miss the beauty, richness, and future outlook in the dexterity of multilinguals to navigate and make sense of the world between languages and cultures. Yet, our research, as well as the work of the Special Issue authors, continue to show that, when listening closely and noticing more expansively, we can better recognize the intelligence and complexity in how multilingual students' use language to engage in engineering design and to understand the natural world around them. The 10 manuscripts included in this Special Issue align with this commitment and desire.

To further situate these manuscripts, we briefly offer an account of the work that went into developing this Special Issue. After publishing our call for abstracts in Fall 2022 (Pérez et al., 2022), we received 40 1000-word extended abstracts from scholars across 10 countries whose work focused on language-minoritized learners in science and engineering education. The authors of 15 of these abstracts were invited to submit their full manuscripts within 6 months. After an extensive and rigorous review process, which entailed multiple rounds of reviews and revisions, 10 manuscripts were accepted in this collection.

Through a reflective and critical examination of language in science and engineering education contexts, this Special Issue serves as a platform to motivate a broader conversación about the importance and the nuances of engaging in research, practice, and policy to critically address language and/or languaging through the lens of translanguaging theory and pedagogy (García & Li, 2014; Li, 2018; Otheguy et al., 2015). The works presented in this collection highlight the dexterity and brilliance of language-minoritized individuals' communicative resources and practices. They also shed light on the various lenses used by educational researchers who draw upon translanguaging to engage with the language resources and practices of these communities. Though different aspects are sure to stand out to readers as they engage with this Special Issue, here we present three takeaways that are salient to us: (1) languaging in science and engineering education is political, (2) translanguaging uncovers existing power structures within language and languaging, and (3) intersectional identities are critical to addressing language. As we describe each takeaway, we weave in and elevate representative manuscripts from this Special Issue. Though we mention only a few manuscripts per takeaway, we invite readers to consider how these ideas cut across the entire collection.

This Translanguaging Special Issue intends to capture possible pathways around what it can look like to engage in translanguaging theory and pedagogy in science and engineering education research, rather than to represent a singular final destination. We hope this collection of articles serves as the beginning of a long conversación between scholars from various disciplinary spaces, a conversación that helps us grapple with and crystallize views around what we mean by language and languaging in science and engineering. Moreover, returning to Dr. Ofelia García's remarks from the opening of this commentary, we hope this conversación pushes us to develop and use more critical and expansive framings to better observe, deconstruct, and support the brilliant ways language-minoritized individuals engage with others, for instance, in scientific sensemaking, design processes, and engineering problem-solving.

With these questions in mind, we now welcome you to engage with this collection of manuscripts. All offer unique examinations of translanguaging across equity-oriented science and engineering education research. ¡Bienvenidos a la conversación!