Supporting Multilingual Science Learners

Abstract

The purpose of the Current Insights feature is to highlight recent research and scholarship from outside the LSE community. In this installment, I draw together work by research teams to address inequities facing multilingual learners in science classrooms. The articles in this set represent a movement based in the ideas and pedagogies of translanguaging. Translanguaging describes the diverse and fluid ways in which learners use and develop language and rejects narrow definitions of language that have been used to marginalize multilingual learners. Applied to science education, translanguaging inspires questions about how to help multilingual learners navigate existing science learning environments while also working to transform restrictive language systems that continue to dominate science learning spaces.