Towards a Critical Translanguaging Biliteracy Pedagogy: The 'Aha Moment' Stories of Two Mandarin Chinese Teachers in Canada

Y

14

Teaching Methods; Literacy Education; Mandarin Chinese; Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction; Community Schools; Power Structure; Bilingualism; Code Switching (Language); English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Language Teachers; Teacher Attitudes; Pandemics; COVID-19; Multiple Literacies; Teacher Collaboration; Critical Literacy; Native Language Instruction; Heritage Education; Language Usage

10.1111/lit.12323

1741-4350
1741-4369

Learning Mandarin Chinese as a heritage or additional language at Chinese complementary schools has long been a tradition for many Asian Canadians. However, research that looks at teachers' experiences and perceptions in Canadian settings, especially the power dynamics embedded in biliteracy development at complementary schools, is scant. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges and opportunities to Chinese complementary schools. In this paper, we, as two Mandarin teachers and literacy researchers, used collaborative autobiographical narrative inquiry to tell our stories to unfold (1) how power dynamics regarding biliteracy/multiliteracy were enacted and reflected in a Chinese complementary school during the pandemic and (2) our re-understanding of Mandarin teaching and learning from critical literacy and translanguaging perspectives. Although the pandemic is over, racial discrimination and social inequity continue to remain in our lives. By analysing our teaching moments and reflections, we hope this study could provide some insights into how critical literacy and translanguaging can be integrated into language and literacy education in multilingual and multimodal settings in the pandemic and post-pandemic contexts.

As Provided

2023

EJ1378533