Publication Date

2019

Comments

Financed through Colciencias Doctoral Scholarship N. 646

Abstract

Using multimodal and digital ethnography, this year-long study makes visible how a community of seven Colombian English language teachers collaborate to make sense of, and use multilingual, multimodal, and digital literacy resources in innovative ways. This study draws on critical multilingualism, translanguaging, and communicative repertoires to respond to this question: How do teachers negotiate and co-construct multilingual, multimodal, and digital strategies for language learning in a Colombian university? Translanguaging and communicative repertoires are powerful theoretical and pedagogic tools that illuminate how to navigate semiotic and digital diversity in education. With translanguaging, García and Li (2014) advocate for the active and complex use of speaker’s linguistic and semiotic repertoires for learning. Likewise, Canagarajah (2007) and Rymes (2012) recommended the inclusion of communicative repertoires for language learning. transcripts, Notes of online teacher workshops, multimodal texts produced by the teachers, and surveys were analyzed using elements from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), and multimodal narrative analysis (Barkhuizen, 2014). The findings reveal how teachers struggle to include local linguistic and cultural resources, and how translanguaging and multimodality can support language teacher education through a change of perspectives. Translanguaging in non-English dominant contexts must be contextualized and theorized in new ways. A second finding consisted in changing perspectives for teacher education. Using multimodal narrative analysis, the study revealed how using teachers’ whole communicative repertoires is beneficial for reflection and negotiation of meaning moving from monoglossic views to translanguaging.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/4e8j-e116

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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