To Örebro University

This presentation casts and exemplifies action research (Stenhouse, 1975) as a viable way of constructing credible knowledge about naturally occurring translanguaging for promoting professional understanding and development. The action research (AR) context is Swedish as a second language learning in which a teacher team decided to employ multilingual language assistants (MLAs) in their beginner courses to make possible the pedagogical use of the students’ first languages. The project design comprised four AR phases each with their own opportunities and challenges. 

Orienting to the research foci. Relevant AR questions emanate from the challenges of practitioners tempered, as this study shows, by research perspectives. For example, an initial focus on MLA’s work and role expanded to incorporate an orientation to first language support for optimizing second language learning.  

Mapping insider views of current practice. It is frequently difficult for outsiders to gain insider views. A hallmark of AR is to mobilize practitioners in investigating their own professional performances. In this study, teachers agreed to video film their classroom interaction with MLAs to make visible patterns of task distribution and language use.  

Turning data into action. In that analysis in AR is rooted in the local context and action-oriented, strategies selected for change in practice carry immediate, potent, professional validity. In the study, analysis of teaching sequences featuring teacher and MLA coordination was conducted collaboratively by teacher constellations. The challenge was that researcher and teacher conceptions of what analysis entails differed significantly. 

Achieving change. AR promotes change in professional practice through practitioner emancipation. Since the teachers had been involved as research partners in all the project phases, they understood and were corporately accountable to the action plan. While teachers subscribe to the importance of ongoing AR development, they regularly succumb to pressing immediate and institutional demands and fall back on well-rehearsed teaching routines.