Bridging science and language : a responsive curriculum for refugee multilingual learners

Abstract

The language demands of sciences are different from everyday language, with more research highlighting the significance of students developing science’s subject-specific language or scientific discourse for enhanced learning and understanding. Language demands of science can be especially challenging to multilingual learners, and with migration and globalization making science classrooms more linguistically diverse, it is crucial that we provide multilingual students with quality science education that leverages their diverse linguistic and cultural resources, emphasizes their contribution to knowledge-building, and engages them actively in disciplinary language. Another growing special group of multilingual learners around the world are refugees displaced due to hardships and war. The aim of this study was to investigate the experiences of Grade 7 Syrian refugees in Lebanon with a linguistically responsive science curriculum that draws on: dialogism and bridging everyday ways of knowing with scientific knowledge and language, multilingualism as a resource and translanguaging, and purposeful conceptual and language scaffolds. My research design combined a qualitative case study with youth participatory action research (YPAR) and participatory action research (PAR). Data collection methods included: recordings of Zoom classroom meetings, an audio-recorded critical and reflective dialogue, student work, the teacher’s narrative reflective journal, and YPAR documentation. Our findings outline language practices and underscore the importance of dialogic teaching that incorporates active multimodal activities and purposeful translanguaging for supporting refugee multilingual students’ meaning making and their development of scientific discourse.