Art Education Practices with Emerging Plurilingual Learners through Authentic Cariño and Translanguaging

This qualitative study analyzed the practices utilized by art educators working with emergent plurilingual learners (EPLs). The case study was framed by social constructivism, where the researcher focused on strategies art educators used to design and modify their lessons, develop support materials, interact with students, and organize their spaces to facilitate EPLs’ work. Participants included four middle school art educators who worked with EPLs in public schools in the same school district and taught general education art classes. The case study investigated the factors and influences that helped the teachers construct their strategies and relationships with students. Extant research on translanguaging and authentic cariño has not yet extended to visual art educators as potential support systems for teaching EPLs. Data for the study included multiple interviews and observations of participants teaching a unit of study. Data analysis involved multiple rounds of coding interview data and observation field notes, which included drawings, photographs, and links to teaching materials used in the classes. This data analysis process ultimately yielded a comprehensive document in which all of the field notes, transcriptions from interviews, and researcher-created images came together in dynamic multimodal notes. The findings showed superficial translanguaging efforts by monolingual English-speaking teachers and intentional and planned translanguaging with a bilingual Spanish and English-speaking teacher. Among all participants, there was evidence of authentic cariño present during observations and interviews. This study adds to the field an important link between sharing the experiences of art educators with EPLs and showing the needs art educators have in relation to planning for and teaching EPLs.