Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies: Attitudes and Strategies of African Skilled Migrants in Anglophone Workplaces

At what point do scholarship and pedagogy in sociolinguistics and language education become complicit in neoliberalism? What can researchers learn from their multilingual informants about how to resist neoliberalism? Those are central questions readers ponder as they dive into Suresh Canagarajah\u27s logically organized and well-argued volume, Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies: Attitudes and Strategies of African Skilled Migrants in Anglophone Workplaces. A book that uses empirical data to support theory construction, it is written for scholars who have followed recent debates in the sociolinguistics and language education fields

We Got This: Toward a Facilitator-Youth Apprenticeship Approach Supporting Collaboration and Design Challenges in Youth-Designed Mobile Location-Based Games

It\u27s May at a New York City high school’s after-school program. We—the adult facilitators—have been guiding a group of youth to produce a location-based mobile game. The teens have worked dozens of hours and want to see a finished product. But with the final playtest coming soon, we are stuck. Reflecting on the most recent session with the participants, we realize that the game is far behind where it should be. Despite having already begun to code the game and write its interactive text, the game’s core mechanics are still only half-baked, and adjusting problematic real-world locations in the digital game will take time we just do not have. Something went wrong in the design process, and we have to figure out what to do next. We ask ourselves, should we make this a teachable moment?” Reiterate the challenges of mobile game design and let them experience what happens when your product does not work and you are facing a deadline? Or should we adults step in, potentially undercutting the teens\u27 agency as designers, to help them achieve a playable outcome? Time is ticking. We decide that this time, we’ll step in and mock up a new prototype to help them out. But there has to be another way to balance the challenges of designing a complex mobile game against the teens’ agency and ownership over the process. What might we do better next time

Example SIOP / Translanguaging Activity for TESOL methods course

This activity was created as an example of a SIOP/Translanguaging integrated activity for a TESOL methods course taught at Bank Street College in the Spring of 202

Translanguaging About, With, and Through Code and Computing: Emergent Bi/multilingual Middle Schoolers Forging Computational Literacies

As computing pervades more aspects of life, and as Computer Science for All (CS for All) initiatives roll out across the U.S., the field must understand the experiences and language practices of emergent bi/multilingual K-12 students and use that knowledge to drive equitable pedagogical and programmatic approaches. But little is known about how emergent bi/multilingual students — a growing population that school systems have often viewed with deficit-based lenses and have thus struggled to educate equitably — use language in the context of CS education. This dissertation addresses this gap by (1) qualitatively documenting and using asset-based frames to analyze moments when emergent bilingual middle schoolers translanguaged (flexibly orchestrated linguistic, semiotic, and technological resources) as they participated in computational literacies in CS-integrated Language Arts, English-as-a-New Language, and Social Studies units co-designed by teachers and researchers working together in a research-practice partnership. It also (2) captures insights about how students understood their meaning-making choices in those moments and (3) uses findings from this empirical work to generate theory about the relationships between translanguaging and computational literacies. Findings provide evidence that emergent bi/multilingual students’ diverse language practices are assets in CS education, and enabled the forging of new meaningful computational literacies. This project lays groundwork for CS practitioners to meaningfully include emergent bi/multilingual students and for bilingual education to consider computing’s role in languaging and expression

“Los programadores debieron pensarse como dos veces”: Exploring the Intersections of Language, Power and Technology with Bi/Multilingual Students

Critical computing approaches to K-12 Computer Science (CS) education aim to promote justice in computing and the wider world. Despite being intertwined with inequitable power dynamics in computing, issues of linguistic (in)justice have received less attention in critical computing. In this article, I draw on theoretical ideas from sociolinguistics and critical computing to analyze qualitative data collected in computing and technology-integrated language and humanities classes serving emergent bi/multilingual middle school students. Conversations about language, technology, and power were close at hand in focal classrooms, and surfaced in moments when students acted as users and critics of, and tinkerers with digital tools. Students exercised agency in relation to both technology and language – using their budding understandings of language to question digital tools, and their engagements with tools to challenge traditional language ideologies. I build on past scholarship and the findings of this analysis to argue for the development of critical translingual computing education – an approach that would engage especially language-minoritized students in critical computing to build on and affirm their language practices and promote linguistic justice in CS education, fields, and tools

Attending to and Transforming Power Dynamics in Translanguaged Research Relationships and Methodology

In this response to Lee (2022), I posit that translanguaging has prompted a re-evaluation of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics methodology in part because the theory has implicated issues of power dynamics and coloniality into the study of language. For this, if researchers wish to conduct research from translanguaging perspectives, it becomes necessary to recognize and attend to power dynamics in research design and methodology. This piece suggests some guiding questions for addressing power dynamics in one aspect of translanguaging methodology — forming research relationships. It explores how, in our relationships to our fields, we might promote answerability (Patel, 2014) for the roles our fields have played in the linguistic hierarchization that translanguaging resists. Second, it explores how research relationships with participants might be made more equitable through researcher reflexivity

CITE Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Mitchell

Spotlights offer in-depth profiles of teacher education faculty from across CUNY who participated in Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE)\u27s Summer Learning Institute 2022

Translanguaging

Translanguaging is a theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. Translanguaging also represents an approach to language pedagogy that affirms and leverages students’ diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning

CITE Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Espinosa

Spotlights offer in-depth profiles of teacher education faculty from across CUNY who participated in Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE)\u27s Summer Learning Institute 2022

Guest satisfaction in relation to food services at resorts in the Caribbean and Brazil

A satisfação com os serviços de alimentação compõe parte importante das Online Travel Reviews (OTRs) de resorts. Estes serviços podem tanto atrair e fidelizar os hóspedes quanto afastá-los, além de influenciar a percepção de satisfação para com o meio de hospedagem propriamente. O objetivo deste estudo é analisar a satisfação de hóspedes em hotéis resort, com relação aos serviços de alimentação oferecidos durante a hospedagem. A metodologia deste estudo quali-quantitativo consistiu na análise da satisfação dos serviços de alimentação, a partir de 1.600 OTRs feitas por hóspedes, no site TripAdvisor, de 10 resorts localizados no Brasil e no Caribe. A análise compreendeu os serviços de café da manhã, almoço, jantar e de bar, em relação à satisfação geral com a alimentação. As OTR foram analisadas por meio de 4 categorias que compreendem a satisfação com a alimentação: os aspectos físicos do estabelecimento, os aspectos de qualidade dos alimentos, os aspectos de qualidade do serviço e os aspectos de qualidade dos prestadores. A análise demonstrou que não existem diferenças nos aspectos observados por hóspedes em resorts no Caribe e no Brasil. As OTRs não apresentam variação nas respostas destas duas regiões, sendo os serviços de bar, de jantar e de almoço os mais lembrados pelos hóspedes. Tanto aspectos físicos quanto de qualidade da alimentação e dos prestadores são relevantes nas OTRs. Os gestores de resorts devem estar atentos sobretudo aos serviços de bar, os resultados indicaram que grande parte da percepção de satisfação com a alimentação está relacionada ao bar. Para aumentar as chances de uma OTR positiva, o serviço de bar deve ser de excelência.Satisfaction with food services is an important part of Online Travel Reviews (OTR) of resorts. These services can attract and retain guests, or drive them away, as well as influencing perceived satisfaction with the accommodation itself. The aim of this study is to analyze guest satisfaction in resort hotels, in relation to the food services offered during their stay. The methodology used in this qualitative and quantitative study was an analysis of satisfaction with the food services, based on 1600 OTRs posted on the TripAdvisor website, by guests of ten resorts located in Brazil and the Caribbean. The analysis focused on guests’ overall satisfaction, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bar services. The OTR were analyzed based in four categories: physical aspects of the establishment, quality of the food, quality of the service, and quality of the providers. The analysis showed that there are no differences in the aspects observed by guests of resorts in the Caribbean and Brazil. The OTRs show no variations in responses between these two regions, with bar, dinner and lunch services being the ones most remembered by guests. Both physical and quality aspects of the food and the providers are relevant in the OTR. Resort managers should be especially attentive to their bar services, as the results indicated that much of the perception of food satisfaction is related to this aspect. To increase the chances of a positive OTR, the bar service should be excellent