Translanguaging and emerging Bilingual's academic self-efficacy in Math and ELA

Abstract

The population of Emergent Bilinguals (EB) in schools continues to rise annually in the United States (García et al., 2008) and with this consistent increase comes the question of how to best educate these students. Currently EBs are reporting lower levels of academic self-efficacy than their native English speaking peers (LeClair et al., 2009), which can lead to lowered academic performance (Bandura, 1993; Fan et al., 2012; Raoofi et al., 2012). Translanguaging is a revolutionary concept that rejects the classic perception of languages as separate entities within the brain. Instead, TLG views a person's multiple languages as part of one united linguistic code (Celic & Seltzer, 2012; Otheguy et al., 2015; Velasco & García, 2013). The purpose of this study was to determine the level of academic self-efficacy in math and ELA of EBs enrolled in a bilingual program that uses translanguaging in class. Furthermore, this study investigated if there was a difference in the academic self-efficacy of EBs who use translanguaging in class and EBs who do not. The results indicated that EBs who use translanguaging in class have a high level of academic self-efficacy in math and ELA. This group of participants reported slightly higher academic self-efficacy than the participant group that does not use translanguaging. However, the results of a t-test found this difference to be statistically insignificant. The results of this study were intended to add to the small body of literature on the academic self-efficacy of EBs to inform best practices for this population of learners. [from abstract]