Students’ voices on translanguaging in primary newcomer education

Abstract

Research on translanguaging is expanding, yet student voices are still largely missing. This study focuses on the voices of students in primary newcomer education. We interviewed twelve students (age 9–12), six from Syria and six from Iraq, who spoke Arabic and Kurmanci at home respectively and had been attending a Dutch reception class for less than a year. We asked them about their experiences with the use of home languages at school. Using a lens of multivoicedness, we coded five to seven voices per student. This multivoicedness lens, illustrated with the students’ quotes, emphasizes that each individual student has multiple voices on translanguaging which are rooted in different contexts, including the educational setting, social relations with others, personal histories, and future wishes and intentions. Therefore, we recommend a contextualized approach to newcomer translanguaging practices, sometimes explicitly encouraging the use of home languages, and sometimes encouraging use of the language of instruction. This respects both students’ desire and need to employ home languages and their wish to learn the language of instruction. We suggest a developmental perspective in which the balance between languages changes over time as students advance in both content knowledge and proficiency in all of their languages.