Research suggests that translanguaging can be transformative for teaching and learning by making students' diverse linguistic resources a meaningful part of classroom discourse. Building on this study, researchers have explored how translanguaging practices can support learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), primarily in the context of bilingual classrooms. However, in the United States, most students learn in English‐dominant classrooms. In response, researchers and educators have begun to explore strategies for inviting and leveraging translanguaging in English‐dominant classrooms, primarily focusing on literacy learning. Less is known about supporting translanguaging in English‐dominant STEM classrooms, particularly with monolingual teachers. In an English‐dominant sixth‐grade STEM classroom engaging in a 9‐week ecology unit, we explored how scientific modeling could not only provide a context for inviting translanguaging, but how it could also provide a setting where modeling and translanguaging could be experienced as analogous meaning‐making practices. Our findings demonstrate that translanguaging has the potential to support new kinds of learning in English‐dominant STEM classrooms, not only about STEM content and practices but also about what counts as legitimate and valuable participation in these spaces.

Building on recent practice-oriented and multimodal shifts in bilingual education and content area education, we propose a disciplinary perspective on translanguaging that leverages the synergy between translanguaging and contemporary conceptualizations of content learning. Specifically, we propose that a disciplinary perspective consists of two features: (a) connecting translanguaging practices to disciplinary practices and (b) framing multimodality as essential to constructing disciplinary meaning. We illustrate these features using examples from our research in sixth-grade STEM classrooms. We argue that a disciplinary perspective could address persistent challenges of developing and researching translanguaging pedagogies and contribute to fostering equitable learning experiences for multilingual students.

Research in science education with multilingual learners (MLs) has expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion can be situated within a larger dialogue about what it means to provide minoritized students with an equitable education. Whereas some conceptions of equity focus on ensuring all students have access to the knowledge, practices, and language normatively valued in K‐12 schools (equity as access), increasingly prominent conceptions focus on transforming those knowledge, practices, and language in ways that center minoritized students and their communities (equity as transformation). In this article, we argue that conceptions of equity provide a useful lens for understanding emerging research in science education with MLs and for charting a research agenda. We begin by tracing how conceptions of equity have evolved in parallel across STEM and multilingual education. Then, we provide an overview of recent developments from demographic, theoretical, and policy perspectives. In the context of these developments, we provide a conceptual synthesis of emerging research by our team of early‐career scholars in three areas: (a) learning, (b) assessment, and (c) teacher education. Within each area, we unpack the research efforts in terms of how they attend to equity as access while pushing toward equity as transformation. Finally, we propose a research agenda for science education with MLs that builds on and extends these efforts. We close by offering recommendations for making this research agenda coherent and impactful: (a) being explicit about our conceptions of equity, (b) paying attention to the interplay of structure and agency, and (c) promoting interdisciplinary collaboration.

Research about modeling emphasizes the importance of heterogeneity in science learning. At the same time, a growing body of scholarship seeks curricular pathways for epistemic and representational convergence. In response to this tension, we propose two constructs: heterogeneity-seeking curricula and commitments. Heterogeneity-seeking curricula emphasize generating and valuing multiple representations of phenomena, offering an image of science that foregrounds messy, nonlinear aspects of learning. Commitments parallel epistemic cognition research by focusing on values that shape students’ modeling; however, rather than looking for disciplinary practices in students’ modeling, commitments take students’ values as a starting point, mapping them to disciplinary resources not typically foregrounded in science education. Using a lens of commitments, we analyze six implementations of a heterogeneity-seeking 6th grade modeling curriculum, and we compare the lens of commitments to the lens of epistemic ideals. Then, we show that, in this context, commitments functioned like epistemic ideals by acting as evaluative resources during modeling. However, commitments also extended beyond this role by helping students ask and explore questions that were not anticipated by the curriculum, problematizing a view of phenomena as objective and external to students’ modeling work and showing them instead to be a production of the classroom’s multidimensional modeling discourse.