2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Given the shifting demographics of the US population, particularly within elementary schools, there is more need than ever to empower teachers to facilitate effective learning with all their students. Additionally, since many of these students are multilingual, increasing in both number of languages and proportion of the population, this need is accentuated. Furthermore, the implementation of the NGSS and infusion of engineering for elementary populations can be challenging for teachers. We see this as a unique opportunity to integrate the two challenges together with a mutually beneficial solution approach: translanguaging through engineering projects.
This work is designed around the power of engineering projects for multilingual students in elementary contexts. Given that the NGSS calls for the introduction of engineering to every grade level and has been widely ratified by US states, there is need to provide training for elementary teachers in this area as most are content generalists who report barriers to their ability to teach this area, such as a lack of confidence or a perceived lack of content preparation.
A disciplinary area where teachers and students are equally unfamiliar, such as engineering, is an excellent opportunity for creation of a more equitable learning environment. One useful method to facilitate this is translanguaging, or the active engagement of all of a student’s linguistic repertoires. This is an example of a more inclusive language ideology. Language ideologies are the beliefs, values, and attitudes that surround language structures and practices in classrooms and society. This project leverages participatory collaboration, design-based iterative active learning techniques to facilitate a teacher community of practice centering the (co)development of engineering lessons with translanguaging. Our work aims to develop a model of teacher PLE which facilitates their productive pedagogical developments for elementary engineering while leveraging translanguaging to provide equitable learning experiences for multilingual populations.
Our project seeks to answer the following questions:
Do the teachers’ language ideologies shift, and if so, how?
How do teachers’ language ideologies, and possible shifts in language ideologies, map onto elements of the PLE?
How do teachers’ language ideologies, and possible shifts in language ideologies, map onto teachers’ engineering pedagogies?
Teachers in the first cohort started by “getting the hang” of engineering lessons, increasing their sense of confidence and self-efficacy, while leaving translanguaging as a supplementary component rather than an infused approach. This changed over the course of the project, where the cohort two teachers were able to integrate translanguaging strategies better, based on the feedback and collaborative efforts of the research team with the cohort 1 teachers. During the most recent PLE, teachers reflected on their emerging understandings and expanding viewpoint as to what even counts as translanguaging, and further proposed tools and resources which they would have found helpful and might assist their peers.

Implications of this work include techniques to help teachers with the difficult work uptaking new conceptual areas and techniques, such as engineering design or translanguaging. Further, this work demonstrates how to facilitate a community of supportive practice, developing tools and learning opportunities with the teacher participants as collaborative designers.