Translanguaging and Teacher-Researcher Collaboration: An Interview with A/Prof. Zhongfeng Tian

As a researcher and teacher educator, A/Prof. Zhongfeng Tian regularly collaborates with teachers in the US context in order to explore how translanguaging can be effectively utilised for student learning. Here he shares his experience and insights on this kind of collaboration – and translanguaging in general – with A/Prof. Marianne Turner.

Marianne: Zhongfeng, you do research on translanguaging, with a particular focus on education. What drew you to the idea of translanguaging as an area of study?

Zhongfeng: When I first encountered translanguaging, I think it captured who I was and how I lived my everyday life. Translanguaging gave me the language to name what I'd been doing all along, drawing upon all my resources to communicate in my daily life and in my academic work. It also affirmed my identity as a transnational, multilingual person. Translanguaging helped make clear to me the myth of monolingualism as a norm or a goal in education.

Translanguaging also made it a legitimate and valid learning opportunity for me to draw on all my language resources; for example, to write in Mandarin Chinese when I’m making initial outlines for English papers, and emojis. So semiotic resources too. These resources show the processes that have shaped who I am, my academic identity. The output might look like monolingual English. But really, my unique translingual transnational voice is embedded there.

And I draw on my different language resources in my home life as well. My partner speaks to me in Cantonese and I reply to him in Mandarin. And we use all those different features English, Cantonese, Mandarin, all the time to communicate, because our goal is to make sense to each other. It's not to talk in one standardized language. It's very fluid.

Marianne: I can relate to that! My partner is Spanish so, in my family, we’re using both Spanish and English all the time. So, I know you have a strong interest in building partnerships between teachers and researchers, and you co-edited a book recently with Leah Shepard-Carey called ‘(Re)imagining Translanguaging Pedagogies through Teacher-Researcher Collaboration’. Why do you think this kind of collaboration is important?

Zhongfeng: I think, since I began to engage with translanguaging research, I’ve always seen teacher-researcher collaboration as an essential way to produce knowledge that is grounded in lived classroom realities. It allows us to move beyond top-down models of educational reform and co-construct a practitioner-informed context, and specific approaches.

Consider Ofelia García, Kate Seltzer, Susana Ibarra Johnson. They talk about this idea of juntos, which means together, right? They talk about teachers, students together. But I think teachers and researchers should also work together. It is through a process of acting, reflecting, and evaluating together that deepens our shared understanding of translanguaging pedagogy, what it may look like, what are some opportunities and specific constraints, and how it can truly serve multilingual students in the classrooms.

I really believe, as educational researchers, it is important that we step out of the ivory tower and not always stay within a theoretical bubble. An important part of our job is to translate theory to practice. A lot of times, teachers know more than us. The constraints, the systems. To them it's like, ‘I have so much to navigate, how can I really promote translanguaging in my classroom, especially in the U.S?’ We have deeply ingrained monolingual ideologies and policies over here.

So, I think teachers who collaborate with researchers can help the researchers stay close to the ground. And they can also be empowered to become policymakers in their own classrooms through this process. They start to take more agency to co-design. They realise that they do not always need to listen to experts to tell them what to do. We share an equitable partnership through collaboration.

And through this type of collaboration, we can see sustainable, lasting change. Teachers then know how to do the research when researchers are not there.

Marianne: Absolutely! We have a similar context in Australia. So what specific collaborations have you been involved in?

Zhongfeng: I've been very fortunate to engage in a number of teacher-researcher collaborations across different states in the US. It's not always easy to get involved in this type of collaboration, because you need the buy-in of the teachers. There's also bureaucracy. The school needs to allow the teachers to have time to work. For my dissertation, I worked closely with a Chinese immersion teacher in Massachusetts to integrate translanguaging pedagogy into a third grade Mandarin immersion classroom.

I think that experience led to lasting change, not only for the teacher who actually later began presenting on translanguaging at local teacher conferences, but also for the school where the principal became more open to rethinking language separation policies in the Chinese immersion program.

In New Jersey I formed partnerships in another Chinese immersion program. I worked with one Chinese teacher and one English teacher, both teaching in the fifth grade. They co-designed translanguaging pedagogies across both spaces. I've also offered professional development sessions for dual language teachers in Portland, Oregon. Most recently, I've been collaborating with a few teachers in Chinese and Vietnamese immersion programs to co-develop a biliteracy program that integrates translanguaging with culturally responsive texts, as a way to affirm students’ linguistic identities.

I don't think I will ever give up collaborating with teachers.

Marianne: That’s really great.

Zhongfeng: I’d like to scale up the collaboration to whole schools and school districts. That’s my goal.

Marianne: We certainly have shared interests. This is what I spend my time thinking about in the Australian context. What would you say you've learned through the process of working with teachers? If you had to name one thing.

Zhongfeng: Well, if I have to say only one thing, it's deep listening. I think, as researchers and teacher educators, we tend to talk too much. We like to educate. But you know, this is wrong. With teachers, what I have really learned is that we need to sit and listen to them, to really give them the space to talk about how they envision translanguaging. What are their concerns? What are their contextual constraints? That's really important.

In US schools we still often have an explicit English-only policy. It can be challenging for teachers to engage with languages other than English in their instructional practice. So, we need to make space for teachers’ voices.

Marianne: That's very important. And what do you think is something in particular that the teachers have learned?

Zhongfeng: Perhaps not learned so much, but they get a sense of affirmation. A lot of the time, teachers are secretly engaging with translanguaging practices already. Whenever I talk about translanguaging in class, they will say, ‘Oh, that's actually what I've been doing. So that's the name for this pedagogical approach. I thought I was doing something wrong. When I, you know, ask a student to leverage their language resources to read a text.’

So, it’s a legitimization of what teachers have intuitively been doing. When they get this sense of affirmation, they are more willing to start thinking about strategically and systematically designing translanguaging spaces in their classroom.

Marianne: Absolutely. So you mentioned a constraint earlier in terms of an English-only policy. Did you find that other researchers who contributed to your book on reimagining translanguaging pedagogies found different kinds of challenges?

Zhongfeng: One common challenge is definitely the institutional resistance. This can come in the form of curriculum mandates and testing frameworks, or administrator scepticism. All of these are structural barriers to translanguaging.

Time is another constraint. Teachers are already stretched very thin. Often, they don't have enough time to really think about translanguaging moments or teacher-researcher collaboration. They can be overworked, which may mean that the translanguaging is not thoughtfully planned or strategically implemented. Then they think, ‘Oh, translanguaging! It wasn't that effective in my classroom.’ But the problem is not with translanguaging. The problem is not having enough time to plan how to utilize it in a strategic way.

Another challenge mentioned by researchers in the book is the emotional labour involved, especially for teachers of colour when they engage in translanguaging pedagogies. Because they are already marginalized in the system, right? And we are asking them to do one more thing, to push against a dominant system and dominant discourses. They are actually navigating multiple layers of marginalization while advocating for their students and for themselves also. We cannot ignore this sort of emotional labour when we work with teachers.

Marianne: That's certainly something we need to consider and a significant challenge. Thank you so much for your time, Zhongfeng, and for all of your insights into translanguaging and teacher-researcher partnerships.

 Zhongfeng Tian (田中锋) is an Associate Professor of Bilingual Education at Rutgers University–Newark, USA. Grounded in translanguaging theory, his research focuses on collaborating with pre- and in-service teachers to foster equitable and socially just learning environments for bi/multilingual students in ESL and dual language immersion contexts. He currently serves on the editorial boards of leading journals, including TESOL Quarterly and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.