Chapter 8: “AHORA YA SÉ QUÉ HACER”: How Translanguaging Mediates Bilingual Teacher Candidate Reflections and Teaching of Mathematics

This chapter examines how translanguaging mediates bilingual teacher candidate (BTC) reflections and their teaching of mathematics lessons in dual language contexts. Mediation is the process by which symbolic and material tools or artifacts are used to make sense of, learn, and act on/in the world (Moll, 2013; Wertsch, 1991). For BTCs, translanguaging as mediation, refers to how BTCs learn to teach mathematics to and through translanguaging. Mediation is an essential concept in the preparation of more effective and inclusive bilingual teachers (Martínez-Álvarez, 2020). In this case study of BTC learning to teach mathematics in bilingual contexts, we examine how translanguaging is used as a tool for learning and becoming a bilingual teacher and for teaching K–5 students in the context of mathematics. Moreover, teacher reflection is a critical stance-taking practice connected to culturally and linguistically responsive teacher identities (Galindo, 1996; Martin & Strom, 2016). This analysis draws from data collected from a cohort of BTCs involved in the Mathematics and Language, Literacy Integration (MALLI) project which was a longitudinal 5-year project that took place in Texas and California.

There are several principles driving this focus. First, we consider translanguaging a ubiquitous naturally occurring communicative phenomena fundamentally part of the language of bilingual interlocutors (teachers, students, families) and within social contexts (schools, home, public spaces) including STEM contexts (Langman et al., 2021; Solís et al., 2018). Second, translanguaging, as a distinctive aspect of bilingual discourses, is shaped by and shapes larger socio-historical-political forces and ideologies. Third, translanguaging is part and parcel of the production and reproduction of sociocultural-sociolinguistic knowledge. Fourth, translanguaging for teachers implicates two overlapping aspects of communicative social action including shifts between languages (doing translanguaging) and referencing shifts in language (talking about translanguaging).