When a monolingual science teacher and multilingual girls engage in science sensemaking through translanguaging: A pedagogical practice, disciplinary tool, and dignity-affirming stance

Abstract

Multilingual youth, from nondominant communities, are often denied critical opportunities for engagement in robust sensemaking due to deficit-based perspectives and linguistic hierarchies. To advance equity, it is important to recognize all youth as epistemic agents and facilitate opportunities to take on intellectual positions. Drawing on translanguaging theory and critical sociocultural learning perspectives, we examine how a monolingual science teacher employed translanguaging as a dignity-affirming stance, pedagogical practice, and disciplinary tool, providing multilingual girls with intellectual positions to engage in robust sensemaking. Using video-interactional analysis, we explore a case of sophisticated sensemaking orchestrated by the teacher's discursive and embodied moves, following the girls' translanguaging practices and disciplinary ideas. Our findings demonstrate how a teacher's translanguaging stance, enacted as a pedagogical practice and disciplinary tool, supported him in developing interpretive power, revealing the multilingual girls' social, cognitive, and communicative brilliances.