Troubling ‘happy’ allure of translanguaging: insights from a preservice teacher’s affective orientation to translanguaging vis-à-vis standardized literacy curriculum

Despite growing interest in the affective dimensions of translanguaging, few have explored how the affective tenor of standardized literacy curricula mediates preservice teachers’ (PSTs) engagement with pedagogical translanguaging for emergent bilinguals in elementary English-medium literacy classrooms. By drawing on the notions of affective stickiness, this study examines how one PST, who was completing a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a TESOL certification, reread and reimagined a standardized literacy curriculum through the lens of translanguaging. Through a longitudinal case study, the findings show (a) the participant’s fluid affective orientation and dis/orientation to emergent bilinguals’ (trans)languaging within and beyond the standardized literacy curriculum; (b) the translanguaging pedagogic actions that the participant could have taken in light of affective dis/orientation; and (c) the affective re/orientations that the participant believed would be the result of those actions. These findings highlight how seemingly quotidian elements of literacy curricular standards and affectivities can be repurposed for the transformative potential of pedagogic translanguaging, or inversely, be appropriated by dominant ideologies in the name of translanguaging happiness or empowerment of emergent bilinguals. This study has implications for supporting PSTs as they resist subtractive language ideologies and embody translanguaging pedagogies, on critical and affective grounds, in English-medium literacy classrooms.