In this article, we investigate translanguaging in an English/Spanish dual language, urban, middle school science classroom as the teacher and students employ a scientific argumentation framework to address biodiversity socioscientific issues. Drawing from theories of sociocultural psychology and sociolinguistics, we considered how engaging in…

All learners bring ideas about science phenomena to classroom learning, including formative assessment tasks. Educators and scholars have long been interested in making school science, including assessment, more equitable and culturally meaningful for (bi)multilingual learners. Translanguaging is increasingly seen as an important assessment design…

Formative assessment, bilingualism, and argumentation when combined can enrich bilingual scientific literacy. However, argumentation receives little attention in the practice of bilingual science education. This article describes the effect of a formative assessment-based pedagogical strategy in promoting university students' argumentation. It…

This article investigates translanguaging as pedagogy in an English/Spanish dual language middle school science classroom as teacher and students engage in scientific argumentation about issues of biodiversity. Drawing from literature on bilingual education, bilingualism, linguistically responsive teaching, and scientific argumentation, we…

As teachers and students access their linguistic and cultural repertoire to teach and learn, comprehensible input may be possible as the result of teachers' systematic efforts to connect with their students. Some evidence of this purposeful connection has been found in studies that have explored teachers' efforts to prioritize meaning making over…

Much attention is now given to academic language, particularly in content areas such as science, amid persistent achievement disparities between students classified as English Language Learners, and more recently, Long Term English Learners, and their English-proficient peers. This attention has fueled debate about the precise features of such…

After reviewing the concepts of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Translanguaging, this article presents an exploratory study of translanguaging in CLIL contexts. Employing illustrative extracts from a collection of CLIL classroom recordings in Austria, Finland and Spain, we argue that both pedagogic and interpersonal motivations…

A growing body of recent scholarship has demonstrated that translanguaging is a natural and characteristic practice of bilinguals that also has great promise as a pedagogical tool. This ethnographic study examines the use of translanguaging by two teachers in a suburban high school ESL program. There, teacher translanguaging played an important…

Considering a Latin@ fifth-grade dual-language classroom (Spanish/English) as a community of practice, this paper explores how a bilingual teacher and her bilingual students, as members of such community, utilize translanguaging (García, 2009) as a learning and teaching tool in social studies and science classes. In this particular classroom, the…

The undisputed position of English as the "international language of science" has resulted in a push for its use in college science classrooms in non-English-dominant contexts worldwide. This study uses classroom observation and interviews to examine the use of Spanish and English in college science classrooms at a land-grant university…

The objective of this ethnographic case study is to describe in detail one professor's translanguaging practices in an undergraduate science course at an officially bilingual university. The data-set is comprised of ethnographic field notes of 11 observed classes, audio recordings of those classes, an interview with the professor, and artifacts…

The article analyzes meaning-making practices in a two-way dual-language (TWDL) program on the U.S.-Mexico border among "transfronterizo" and Mexican-origin youth. In the article, we show that emergent bilingual learners and their teacher participate in activities that mediate understanding of science content knowledge. We show how the…

Focusing on two bilingual children experiencing learning difficulties, I explore the scientific representations these students generate in an afterschool programme where they have opportunities to exercise agency. In the programme, children use a digital camera to document science in their lives and engage in conversations about the products they…

Efforts to improve educational outcomes for English learners often focus on "academic language," but unfortunately the field lacks a clear, agreed-upon definition of the concept. This article reports on a design research study that focused on students' engagement in one academic practice over several months: reading and discussing…

This study focuses on the characteristics of discourse between Latino immigrant children and their teacher during science instruction. Peer interaction was analyzed to identify the use and importance of the native language (L1) for the development of content knowledge during group collaboration. In addition, the interaction between teacher and…