TESOL Quarterly | 2019
Navigating Authoritative Discourses in a Multilingual Classroom: Conversations with Policy and Practice.
Abstract
Using Bakhtinian concepts of persuasive and authoritative discourse, this study reports on science and English language arts instructional practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. Situated in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and through the use of case study, the study explores classroom discourse data to illustrate how teachers use instructional practices to reproduce, contest, or navigate prevailing institutional monolingual policies when mediating students’ access to literacy and content. By analyzing classroom discourse, the authors argue that restrictive language policies that aspire for fixity disconnect multilingual learners from their daily realities. In contrast, they call for a (re)construction of multilingual pedagogy that capitalizes on the strengths of learners, teachers, and linguistic communities by embracing students’ languages and language varieties in language learning and literacy development. In particular, implications are drawn for the use of EMI for emerging bilingual and multilingual learners. The authors identify the need to prepare teachers for a multilingual reality through legitimizing multilingual pedagogies such as translanguaging. digitalcommons.unl.edu Kiramba & Harris in TESOL Quarterly (2018) 2 Multilingualism was ideologically obscured in 17thand 18th-century Europe through the rationalization of “one-nation, one-language” campaigns that led to suppression of certain languages and enactment of language standardization movements during the 19th century (Adams, Janse, & Swain, 2002; Franceschini, 2011). Standardization movements shaped language and literacy research and embraced monolingual ideology as a norm, rather than as a social ideological and political construct. In many postindependence African nations, the pervasiveness of multiple languages has supplied a pretext for adopting monolingual ideology that excludes use of home languages in educational contexts. National policy in multilingual Kenya, for instance, mandates English medium instruction (EMI) from fourth grade in all public schools. However, research (Abiria, Early, & Kendrick, 2013; Cenoz & Gorter, 2013; Makalela, 2015) shows that multilinguals typically leverage their communicative repertoires as an integrated system for maximizing communicative potential. This study investigates how two teachers of English language arts (ELA) and science utilized their students’ linguistic repertoires in EMI classrooms and the patterns of participation that ensued in the process of student knowledge construction. Discourse Practices in African Classrooms EMI in African classrooms has impacted students’ engagement variously. Classroom discourse studies in African classrooms have often shown prevalence of teacher-centered discourse patterns, which have been said to contribute to silencing and/or exclusion of students’ sociocultural experiences and to underachievement; hence, exclusion from epistemic access (Bunyi, 2001; Kiramba, 2017a, 2018; Ngwaru, 2011). This is because EMI has often marginalized home languages that are familiar to students, and thus linguistic hierarchies have been reproduced in these postcolonial settings. Scholars have observed that students’ participation is constrained in knowledge production due to their anxiety in using unfamiliar language(s), reluctance to participate, and lack of self-confidence (Opoku-Amankwa, 2009), rendering students as recipients of scripted knowledge. This trend has been reported in several African countries (e.g., Ngwaru, 2011, and Opoku-Amankwa, 2009, for Ghana; Williams & Snipper, Kiramba & Harris in TESOL Quarterly (2018) 3 1990, for Malawi; Abd-Kadir & Hardman, 2007, for Kenya and Nigeria; Abd-Kadir & Hardman, 2007, Ackers & Hardman, 2001, Bunyi, 2001, 2008, Kembo-Sure & Ogechi, 2016, Kiramba, 2016a, Pontefract & Hardman, 2005, among others, for Kenya). These studies show that teacher–student interaction often takes the form of lengthy recitations of questions (by the teacher) and answers (by individual pupils or the whole class). Pontefract and Hardman’s (2005) study of classroom discourse in Kenyan primary classrooms observed that recitation by the teacher and memorization and rote repetition by the students dominated classroom discourse, with few to no student-generated questions. They concluded that the teaching approach did not enhance a mastery of English. Similarly, Abd-Kadir and Hardman’s (2007) study on discourse patterns in Nigerian and Kenyan classrooms found a predominant teacher-centered discourse that emphasized recall of facts and limited student participation in knowledge production. The use of rote memorization, repetition of formulaic phrases, and minimal student input has been deemed safe talk practices (Chick, 1996). Chick (1996) described safe talk as highly limited language used by teachers to avoid violating any proscribed language routines, like first language (L1) use in EMI classrooms. Students employ safe talk to avoid situations that give rise to linguistic policing and gatekeeping by teachers and other students. Such safe talk further leads to student silencing, rendering students’ home language resources invisible (Kiramba, 2017a). Classroom discourse research studies have been carried out in multilingual settings in the Global South and Global North since the 1990s (Martin-Jones, 2015). These studies demonstrated prevalence of code-switching practices in the classroom (Adendorff, 1993; Arthur, 1996; Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001; Lin, 1999; Merritt, Cleghorn, Abagi, & Bunyi, 1992; Ndayipfukamiye, 1994). Code-switching was seen as an additional resource for multilingual teachers and students. Teachers drew on this resource to meet specific purposes in the classroom. For example, Arthur (1996) demonstrated a teacher’s use of Setswana in a multilingual classroom to mitigate the challenges of using EMI. These earlier studies demonstrated the importance and functions of home languages in classroom discourse. To date, research in educational linguistics across the globe continues to demonstrate the importance of home languages in connecting Kiramba & Harris in TESOL Quarterly (2018) 4 classroom content to the familiar linguistic and cultural world of the student, making a case for inclusion of home languages in the classroom to make content more accessible to students (e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2013; Cleghorn, 1992; Cummins, 2008; García, 2009; Gibbons, 2006; Kiramba, 2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b; Makalela, 2015; Merritt et al., 1992; Probyn, 2015; Setati, Adler, Reed, & Bapoo, 2002).