Pedagogical translanguaging in digital environments. Teaching and learning with tablets in a multilingual Norwegian classroom

Owing to increasing linguistic diversity in Norwegian classrooms, the national curriculum requires teachers to incorporate a resource perspective on multilingualism in their teaching Many of these classrooms have also become heavily digitized. Few studies, however, have concerned themselves with how these two developments interact, that is, how teachers utilize tablets for educational achievement in linguistically diverse classrooms. This study analyses in detail how two teachers in a multilingual fourth-grade classroom in Norway use tablets as an integral part of their didactic design to incorporate students’ heritage languages and funds of knowledge into the language arts class. The data consists of classroom observations, interviews with teachers and students, and selected screen recordings from students’ tablets. Applying a key incident approach, the analysis demonstrates that teachers make use of the opportunities offered by the tablets for pedagogical translanguaging practices and that the students respond by mobilizing various aspects of their semiotic repertoires. The students also expressed enjoyment during the design, in particular when drawing on their parents as resources and when taking on the role of language experts during metalinguistic conversations in class.