Uncovering the practice gap: language ideologies and translanguaging in interactive read-alouds

This qualitative case study examines how multilingual college students’ language ideologies informed their approaches to translanguaging pedagogy in an interactive read-aloud video project. Eight multilingual undergraduates created interactive read-aloud videos for K-5 emergent bilingual children as part of a community-based project. Although participants described translanguaging as fluid, embodied, and meaningful, their videos consistently defaulted to sentence-level translation and English-centered comprehension support. Interview data revealed that these choices were shaped by monoglossic and diglossic ideologies internalized through schooling, which positioned languages as separate, hierarchical, and tied to distinct domains of use. Findings suggest that multilingualism alone does not automatically lead to translanguaging pedagogy; rather, enacting translanguaging in instructional contexts requires sustained opportunities for ideological reflection and the cultivation of heteroglossic understandings of language.