Savviness of sixth graders: Student perspectives about translanguaging during science formative assessment

Science classroom assessment often requires multilingual learners to demonstrate ideas using only English-language resources. These assessments can provide an incomplete picture of students' knowledge and limit subsequent learning opportunities. Increasingly, science teachers are incorporating translanguaging pedagogies in their instructional practices. Less is known about students' perspectives of translanguaging in science. In this manuscript, we employ equity-as-access and equity-as-transformation lenses to investigate multilingual learners' perspectives about translanguaging as a formative assessment practice. Data came from a larger participatory co-design design study in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school in the Mountain West. We qualitatively analyzed 8 focus group interview transcripts with 13 sixth-grade students from across 4 formative assessment cycles. Analysis was both inductive and deductive. Findings suggest that sixth graders have savvy, nuanced views about translanguaging that bridge equity-as-access and equity-as-transformation lenses. They saw translanguaging as both supporting their English language development and as an important practice to allow them to focus bilingually on their science ideas without translating everything into English. Additionally, they highlighted tensions associated with welcoming translanguaging in schools with de facto English-only languaging norms. This study has implications for teachers, assessment designers, and researchers. Findings signal structural/policy changes needed to authentically center translanguaging as an equity-oriented practice across science assessment systems.