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Creative English Pedagogy in the Translanguaging Space

Creative English Pedagogy in the Translanguaging Space. ALEA National Conference Wednesday 10 th July 2019 Dr Kathy Rushton, University of Sydney ( kathy.rushton@sydney.edu.au ) Dr Janet Dutton, Macquarie University ( janet.dutton@mq.edu.au )

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Creative English Pedagogy in the Translanguaging Space

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  1. Creative English Pedagogy in the Translanguaging Space ALEA National Conference Wednesday 10th July 2019 Dr Kathy Rushton, University of Sydney (kathy.rushton@sydney.edu.au) Dr Janet Dutton, Macquarie University (janet.dutton@mq.edu.au) PP available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334326792_Rushton_Dutton_2019_ALEA_Conference_PP https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/activities/alea-national-conference-2019

  2. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Overview • Context: Teaching English in Australian schools • Teaching culturally diverse learners • Identity texts • Drama Pedagogy • The Supportive Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms Framework • Translanguaging and the translanguaging space • Socio-spatial theory • The research design and findings

  3. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 English teaching on the high wire* (*Dutton, 2017; # Kostagriz & Doecke, 2011; Parr, Bulfin & Rutherford, 2013; ** Chik, Benson and Maloney, 2019; Dutton & Rushton, 2018;D’warte, 2014)

  4. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Diversity of linguistic backgrounds • Australia is characterised by a complex, super-diverse (Vertovec, 2007) cultural and linguistic landscape with many cities and neighbourhoods becoming multilingual environments. • Many Australian classrooms are comprised of students from diverse backgrounds who draw on multiple ways of thinking and communicating about their knowledge and experiences. • However, students with these diverse linguistic backgrounds may often feel alienated during schooling because they are consistently reminded that their community, culture and use of language are not valued by the wider society (Cummins and Early, 2012; D’warte, 2014; Garcia, Johnson and Seltzer, 2017). • This alienation can have a negative impact on their engagement with learning, their literacy and their sense of well-being with ongoing negative consequences for both their academic success and their post- schooling involvement with their own communities and society more broadly. (Dutton & Rushton, under review)

  5. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Translanguaging • Translanguaging - recent, innovative turn in multilingual education (Blackledge & Creese, 2010; Canagarajah, 2011; Garcia, 2009; Williams, 1996). • It is a dynamic process in which multilingual speakers employ a flexible use of their individual linguistic resources • Takes the usual practices of bilingual speakers as the starting point allowing flexible bilingualism to operate without “clear boundaries” and be positioned “at the heart of the interaction” (Blackledge and Creese, 2010: p. 22).

  6. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Resistance to linguistically diverse practices in subject English • Educational policy and priorities have entrenched monolingualism in the English classroom • Resistance to translanguaging from: • teachers (Holdway & Hitchcock, 2018; Dutton & Rushton, 2018). • use of home language seen as something students do “in school corridors and during recess and lunch”, or (Dutton & Rushton, 2019, under review) • students and their families, especially speakers of minority languages who rightly equate fluency in the dominant language with educational success (Hamman, 2018; Dutton & Rushton, 2019, under review)

  7. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Why? • Fed by the fear that expected outcomes will not be met (Poza, 2018) if the linguistic exchanges in the classroom do not conform to a more familiar focus on the target language. Dependent on the task. But I guess I would say I encourage home dialects only written in English. I feel like that’s what they are assessed in and therefore what I encourage/use more so” . (Mid-career English teacher in Dutton & Rushton, under review)

  8. The Identity Texts professional learning research project

  9. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 History of the project • This Identity Texts Project – engagement with culture and sustained quality teaching of English. • Initial site: low SES SW Sydney school, LBOTE & EAL/D • Worked initially as mentors and colleagues, supporting professional learning. Most staff had undertaken prior PL in teaching language and grammar. • The project extending into 4 other schools in 2019 • Research dimension commenced in 2018 and continues with additional schools joining in 2020. • Pursuing grants to further the work.

  10. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Aim: Creative English Pedagogy by … • Designing learning that embraces students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires using - identity texts and - drama pedagogy - employing the ‘Supportive Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms Framework’ • Creating a translanguaging space

  11. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 What are identity texts? Identity texts: • Any products of students’ creative work that connect to the student’s culture and community (Cummins, 1981; Cummins 1986) and • Disrupt a transmission pedagogy whereby students are viewed as blank slates (Freire, 1975). • Offer an accessible, focused way to draw attention to “essential aspects of the link between identity affirmation, societal power relations, and literacy engagement” (Cummins et al., 2015: p. 556) Importantly for this project, they help bring the voices of multilingual students to the fore.

  12. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Why drama pedagogy? • Marginalised in many classrooms • Used only in ‘drama units’ • Low teacher confidence with drama strategies (Dutton & Rushton, 2018) BUT … Research shows: • Drama pedagogy fosters positive academic and wellbeing outcomes for all students (Ewing, 2010; Ewing & Saunders, 2016; Lee et al., 2015). • Imagination is a means through which students can assemble a coherent world and cultivate empathy (Greene, 1995) • drama’s kinaesthetic engagement can promote broader student engagement in learning (Lee et al., 2015; Rothwell, 2011) • connection between language development and the use of drama as a pedagogical approach being well established (Dunn & Stinson, 2011; Ewing, 2012). • Supports progression on the mode continuum from spoken to written mode.

  13. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 The Supportive Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms Framework Focus today (Dutton, D’warte, Rossbridge & Rushton, 2018a)

  14. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 What is a Translanguaging space’ • A transformative space meaning the process of cultural translation between different traditions takes place and different “identities, values and practices … combine together to create new identities, values and practices” (Li Wei, 2014: p.1223). • “creates a social space for the multilingual user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity (Li Wei, 2011: p. 1223). • Draws on socio-spatial theory (Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1980)

  15. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Socio-spatial theory Schools Normal or everyday practice, relationships, settings and systems. Monolingual classroom practices ‘translanguaging space’ and drama pedagogy Schools Curriculum policy, teaching professional standards and government education policy. Schools New possibilities of how things might be, space of transgression & symbolism. Translanguaging

  16. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 An ethnographic multi-site case study • Qualitative research, HERC approved • Theoretical frame: Socio-spatial theory • Volunteer participants from schools undertaking PL with the researchers • Anonymised data analysed inductively, iteratively and recursively in a process of “enhanced, intensified reading” (Gallop, 2007, p. 183). • Key features and patterns were annotated uses socio-spatial theory as a lens.

  17. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Research Data & Findings 2017-8 The Identity Text Professional Learning Project

  18. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 What is readers theatre?

  19. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Readers’ Theatre This is not my hat Translanguaging modelled First draft of Year 7 group script using visual scaffold

  20. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Translanguaging modelled Readers’ Theatre This is not my hat First draft of Year 7 group script using visual scaffold

  21. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019

  22. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Juxtaposition of language language spaces In performance, the English translation is delivered by a narrator Knowledge of script conventions is not fully developed but complex linguistic knowledge in evidence

  23. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 English only – representative of this space in the students’ life. Juxtaposition of the 2 language and cultural worlds – transition literal and symbolic in the stage directions Translanguaging – for characterisation, verisimilitude and dramatic impact Language mapping (D’warte, 2014)

  24. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019

  25. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Findings • Using translanguaging pedagogy allowed students to ‘soft assemble’ their various language practices in “a seamless and complex network of multiple semiotic signs” (Garcia and Li Wei, 214, p. 25) • Use of students’ and teachers’ home languages ‘bringing us all together’ and ‘bridging a gap between teacher and student’. • Teachers used their own cultural stories as prompts for writing ­– a transformative practice for most. • One teacher told her class of her grandmother’s escape from a prisoner of war camp and reported: ‘I felt proud to be vulnerable. Sharing personal details about myself and my grandmother made me so invested in my grandmother’s journey … (which I hadn’t known before) and she was so proud to have her story shared.” Use of drama pedagogy has become normal practice Drama is just what we do, now. (Mid Career, English teacher)

  26. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Resistance • Some resistance to ‘thirdpsace’ translanguaging practices was evident. • Teachers reported some students opting not to include home languages in final draft versions of their scripts that were to be shared with peers. • It is possible to read this as students retreating to ‘lower risk’ and ‘secondspace’ sanctioned practices because they did not feel confident in a public display of their home language(s). • Alternatively, it may indicate the intrusion into students’ writing practice of ‘secondspace’ institutional beliefs that prioritise/value English and/or ‘firstspace’ classroom practices. • More research is needed to fully establish the factors impacting on this resistance.

  27. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Next: Identity Text Stepping Stones Project Teacher initiated English & CAPA connected curriculum project at a secondary site Stepping Stones = Family Celebration Community Country Identity Stimulus: English (Literary text); Music (Stimulus: piece of music) Visual Arts (Stimulus: Art work) Product: Poetry, Descriptive writing, Self portraits, Readers’ Theatre & Film making [Based on Chapter 2:Tell me your story]

  28. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Publications • Loads of practical classroom ready, successful strategies for creating identity text, using creative pedagogy to enhance literacy and well-being. • Work samples and exemplar texts. • Purchase at ALEA or Order online from PETAA Dutton, J., D’warte, J., Rossbridge, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Tell me your story: confirming identity and engaging writers in the middle years. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teachers' Association (PETAA)

  29. Dutton, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Confirming identity using drama pedagogy: English teachers' creative response to high-stakes literacy testing. English in Australia, 53(1), 5-14. Free access: https://www.aate.org.au/documents/item/1606 Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019

  30. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Dutton, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Poets in the making: Confirming identity in English. Scan, 37(3), 1-12. Available here.

  31. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 Presenter References • Dutton, J., D'warte, J., Rossbridge, J., & Rushton, K. (2018a).  My language is in my heart and my head: hearing student voices in multilingual classrooms. PETAA Paper, 213, 1-12. • Dutton, J., D’warte, J., Rossbridge, J., & Rushton, K. (2018b). Tell me your story: confirming identity and engaging writers in the middle years. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teachers' Association (PETAA). • Dutton, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Confirming identity using drama pedagogy: English teachers' creative response to high-stakes literacy testing. English in Australia, 53(1), 5-14. Free access: https://www.aate.org.au/documents/item/1606 • Dutton, J. & Rushton, K. (Under review). Using the translanguaging space to develop symbolic representations of culture.

  32. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 References • Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (2010). Multilingualism: A critical perspective. London, UK: Continuum. • Canagarajah, S, (2013). Negotiating translingual literacy: An enactment. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1), 40–67. • Chik, A., Benson, P., & Moloney, R. (eds). (2019). Multilingual Sydney. New York, NY: Routledge. • Cummins, J. (1981). Four misconceptions about language proficiency in bilingual education. NABE Journal,5(3), 31–45. • Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. Harvard Educational Review, 56 (1), 18–36. • Cummins, J., & Early, M, (eds.). (2011). Identity texts: The collaborative creation of power in multilingual schools. Stoke- on-Trent: Trentham Books. • Dunn, J. & Stinson, M. (2011). Not without the art!! The importance of teacher artistry when applying drama as pedagogy for additional language learning, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 16(4), 617-633. • Dutton, J. (2017). English teachers in the making: Portraits of pre-service teachers’ journeys to teaching. PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, Australia. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2123/17176.

  33. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 • D’warte, J. (2014). Exploring linguistic repertoires: Multiple language use and multimodal activity in five classrooms. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 37(1), 21–30. • Ewing, R. (2010). The Arts and Australian Education: Realising Potential. Melbourne: ACER Press. • Ewing, R. & Saunders, J. (2016). The School Drama Book: Drama, Literature and Literacy in the Creative Classroom. Sydney: Currency Press. • Ewing, R. & Simons, J. (2016). Beyond the Script Take 3 Drama in the English and literacy classroom. Newtown:PETAA • Freire P. (1975). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. • García, O., Johnson, S., & Seltzer, K. (2017). The translanguaging classroom. Leveraging student bilingualism for learning. Philadelphia: Caslon. • García, O. & Li Wei (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. • Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essay on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San-Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. • Hamman, L. (2018). Translanguaging and positioning in two-way dual language classrooms: a case for criticality. Language and Education 32(1), 21-42.

  34. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 • Holdway, J. and Hitchcock,C. (2018). Exploring ideological becoming in professional development for teachers of multilingual learners: Perspectives on translanguaging inthe classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education75, 60-67. • Li Wei (2011). Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics,43, 1222–1235. • Lee, B., Patall, E., Cawthon, S. & Steingut, R. (2015). The effect of drama-based pedagogy on PreK-16 Outcomes: A meta-analysis of research from 1985 to 2012. Review of Educational Research, 85, 3-49. • Lefebvre H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford:Blackwell Publishers. • Li Wei (2014). Who’s teaching whom? Co-learning in multilingual classrooms. In: May S (ed) The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education. New York, NY and London, England: Routledge, pp. 167–190. • Parr, G., Bulfin, S.& Rutherford, S. (2013). Narratives of/in English teaching and learning. Idiom 49(3), 2–7. • Rothwell, J. (2011). Bodies and language: process drama and intercultural language learning in a beginner language classroom. Research in Drama Education: The Journal ofApplied Theatre and Performance, 16(4), 575-594.

  35. Dr Kathy Rushton & Dr Janet Dutton, 2019 • Soja, E. (1980). The Socio-Spatial Dialectic. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70(2), 207-225. • Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-Diversity and Its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6), 1024–1054. • Williams, C. (1996). Secondary education: Teaching in the bilingual situation. In: C. Williams, G. Lewis & C. Baker (eds.) The language policy: Taking stock Llangefni, Wales: CanolfanAstudiaethauIaith, pp. 193–211.

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