This paper explores what kind of translanguaging pedagogies teachers and students in bilingual learning situations at the University of Helsinki would benefit from and how these could be implemented and supported in practice. We focus on qualitative and quantitative analysis of data gathered through classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews.
The University of Helsinki is a bilingual university educating experts in Finnish and Swedish. In order to promote multilingual values in academia and society, in 2014 University introduced TvEx-programs to numerous disciplines. These bilingual Bachelor degrees strive to educate bilingual experts in various fields. This paper is based on the research of TvEx-programs carried out by the PEDAMO-project, whose main goals are to 1) develop teaching that takes the linguistic asymmetry of the students into account and support deep learning, and to 2) develop linguistic support for students in writing, speaking, understanding, and reading. We explore what kind of translanguaging pedagogies (TP) teachers and students would benefit from in bilingual learning situations and how these could be efficiently implemented and supported in practice. We consider TP to be a systematic use of all linguistic resource students employ in order to learn and interact with other students and teachers in a linguistically non-authoritarian learning climate, where all languages are of equal value. We focus on classroom observations and interview data gathered among students, teachers, and language teachers who provide language support. Our methodology is both qualitative and quantitative. The challenge with the asymmetry of TvEx-classrooms is that some students define themselves as bilingual and some as monolingual. While asymmetric repertoires of two languages remarkably influence learning and teaching, there is also a great variety in teachers’ linguistic backgrounds, language awareness and skills in teaching linguistically asymmetric groups. The challenge is thus to engage teachers and students in learning bilingual expertise and help them widen their views on language ideologies and attitudes that still tend to mold language policies and practices of individuals and groups.
