In this classroom-based qualitative study, we examine how a small group of content area teacher candidates developed emerging critical language awareness (CLA) during one graduate-level translanguaging-infused teacher education course on multilingual theories and practices. The findings point out the potential of translanguaging in prompting spontaneous reflections on pre-service teachers’ personal experiences with language and languaging, paving way for them to critically rethink the status of English in teaching, learning, and communication for social justice. Yet, although teacher candidates demonstrated their emerging CLA as manifested at the ideological level, they encountered difficulties enacting critical translanguaging into practice. In their lesson plans, English was largely positioned as the end goal of content-area education and translanguaging was often reduced to a translation strategy to scaffold academic language development. Based on the findings, we propose suggestions for teacher education course design and advocate for program-wide efforts in sustaining and strengthening CLA across the curriculum.

In response to the multilingual and multicultural realities in U.S. classrooms, it is important to prepare all teachers who understand translanguaging and are capable of implementing it across contexts. This exploratory qualitative study investigates how five pre-service content area teachers grappled with translanguaging in a graduate-level teacher education course which was designed from a translanguaging perspective. Data sources include teachers’ written coursework and exit interviews, and class observations. Using an inductive coding approach, we found that our content area teacher candidates developed a dynamic, holistic view to understand bilinguals’ meaning-making practices. They also perceived students’ home languages as a valuable resource that needs to be incorporated in general education classrooms to boost emergent bilinguals’ academic learning and socioemotional well-being. In addition, all five participating teachers employed a variety of translanguaging strategies (e.g., grouping based on home languages and providing translations) in their content area lesson plans.

It is important to understand multilingual students’ lived experiences and sense-making in their everyday written communication before rethinking the implementation of translingual writing in college composition classrooms. Unpacking multilinguals’ written communication across social and academic contexts, this exploratory qualitative study integrates digital ethnographic and interview methods to examine the first-semester communication experiences of 10 undergraduate students. The findings indicate that while participants engaged in translingual written communication as part of their lived experiences in social contexts, they were reluctant to draw upon their home language in academic settings. Based on the findings, I discuss the pedagogical implications of supporting multilingual students in college composition classrooms. I argue that instructors must reposition themselves as co-learners together with their multilingual students to enact a translingual stance in academic settings and reimagine meaningful written communication beyond English-only. This study sheds light on rethinking the pedagogical practices around implementing translingualism in college composition.