Pedagogías Entrenzadas: Towards a Transformative Framework in Science Education Centering Multilingual Learners

Secondary bilingual science education has historically served as a means to assimilate youth into Eurocentric science learning. This trend continues in the present through academic English as the language of science and restrictive science curriculum. Bilingual science learning is still undertheorized, and gaps exist in the literature in regard to the ways science education can move towards transformation in otherwise restrictive spaces. Assimilative practices through science and langauge create settled expectations forcing students to compartmentalize to fit a standard notion of what it means to be a scientist and sound like a scientist (Bang et al., 2013). However, this study explores that ways curriculum can create ruptures that seek transformation to expand what learning in secondary bilingual science classrooms can look like. Thus, the questions that guide this study are How does attending to critical science, language, and culturally responsive pedagogies in combined ways create ruptures in school science through curriculum and classroom enactment? And how do students sense make about langauge and science within these ruptures? This study proposes pedagogías entrenzadas to bring together critical science pedagogies with pedagogies of language and culturally responsiveness towards transformation in bilingual science spaces. It seeks holism and unity through braids. Through this braid educators can work to create ruptures in which curriculum is connected to student languages, cultures, and lives through themes and Social Justice Science Issues (SJSI). Pedagogías entrenzadas positions sensemaking and generative words as central in the learning guided by learning pursuits. This study employs critical practitioner action research methodologies with aspects of design-based research to explore curriculum and enactment in the classroom. The aspects of DBR that are instrumental in the study are the creation of design-based principles as a x framework and tool for learning. The context of this study is a predominantly Latiné Title I community high school in the outskirts of a large city. At the time of the study, the bilingual program at the school follows the sheltered model of bilingual education focusing on English assimilation. This study occurred in a 9th grade newcomer physical science course that sought to transform what it meant to learn science in a multilingual and multicultural space. The school now offers dual language science courses in biology and chemistry in addition to the transitional bilingual model that existed previously. There are three key findings that emerged from the data and analysis of this study: (1) Planning around generative themes and student funds of knowledge through pedagogías entrenzadas created ruptures for sensemaking and translanguaging about science and society. (2) Pedagogías entrenzadas means educators can repurpose learning activities to expand what it means to learn and do science in transdisciplinary ways. (3) In these expansive spaces the beauty of pedagogías entrenzadas lies in the ways students consistently engage in and employ a range of linguistic, cultural, and academic resources in their sensemaking. In the discussion, I elaborate on specific emergent-design principles that arose from the findings. These principles are the framework of pedagogías entrenzadas. I discuss the ways educators can plan around themes and learning pursuits. As part of this planning, and a pedagogical stance, positioning words as generative opportunities to sense make is a key feature of pedagogías entrenzadas. Through generative words and sensemaking, translanguaging is (re)positioned as a political practice in the classroom. Along with the value of translanguaging, educators can work to create heterogeneity in science learning to create expansive spaces towards transformation.