The case of a pedagogical translanguaging intervention in a trilingual primary school: the students’ voice

Abstract

Although translanguaging has become a central issue in the multilingual education literature, research on pedagogical translanguaging practices remains underdeveloped. This article describes a study of 72 primary school students (age = 10.68) who participated in an intervention based on translanguaging pedagogies. During the intervention, the boundaries between Basque, Spanish, and English were purposefully and systematically softened to develop the students’ communicative competence in the three languages. The study adopted a qualitative approach to explore the pedagogical validity of translanguaging. Focus group discussions were conducted as well as classroom observation in the Basque, Spanish and English language subjects. Qualitative Content Analysis was conducted to analyze the data. In addition, we analyzed translanguaging materials completed by students to gain a better understanding of their performance. The results are discussed in terms of specific translanguaging strategies designed for the intervention and show an increase in students’ metalinguistic awareness in the three languages. Students found pedagogical translanguaging useful since it facilitates language comparison and scaffolds understanding and written production. In addition, they found vocabulary strategies particularly beneficial for scaffolding foreign language learning. Finally, implications for the future development of translanguaging practices and research are briefly discussed.