LLED Research Seminar Series: Student Spotlight

LLED Research Seminar Series: Student Spotlight

Serikbolsyn Tastanbek
Teacher educators are partially responsible for the development of pre-service teachers’ beliefs towards translanguaging during university-based teacher preparation programs. The following research question is posed: What are Kazakhstani pre-service teacher educators’ beliefs on translanguaging? There are also two subquestions: 1) What are Kazakhstani pre-service teacher educators’ beliefs on translanguaging as a general practice? 2) What are Kazakhstani pre-service teacher educators’ beliefs on the use of translanguaging as a pedagogical tool in their teaching practice? This qualitative interview-based study included 10 participants that were faculty members from two higher education pedagogical institutions. The findings revealed that most of the teacher educators preferred to mainly use English, and consequently viewed translanguaging as a last resort. However, another finding indicates that there were instances when translanguaging was indeed valued as a pedagogical tool.

Maya Gal
Barbara Godard (1990) asks: “who has the right to speak or write? What are the appropriate forms for their utterance to take?”, and finally, “who is speaking, to whom, on whose behalf, and in what context?” (Godard, 1990, p.18). An author inevitably distorts and modifies an original traumatic experience by inserting his voice into the narrative via stylistic choices, formatting, narration, etc. By default, he is thus positioned as a liminal mediator between the experiencer of the trauma and the reader. Focusing on trauma narratives as interdisciplinary, this presentation will draw on Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel collection Maus and the literary collection Refugee Tales vol I to discuss implications of authorial responsibility in this context. This presentation also looks to continue a dialogue about censorship and the paradox of “speaking the unspeakable” and “representing the unrepresentable” in recounting trauma narratives (Brown, 2014, p.14).