Making Space for Student Voices in Multilingual Public Policy Modules.
Part of my work as a professor of French Studies is to help students think more clearly about Public Policy in other countries. Public Policy is what a governing body creates on behalf of its public, in response to a problem or issue that comes before it. Governments make policy about schools, schools make policy about education, and so on. France’s policies not only perplex students, but they downright confound them, whether we are talking about France’s race statistics (they don’t collect them), their approach to religious freedom (you cannot express it in public K-12 spaces), or their cultural politics (the baguette recently gained UNESCO heritage status). These policies are a product of France’s history and culture, but if we examine them closely, they reveal our own cultural beliefs. My students tend to become emotional, indignant, and irritated during these discussions; they deem these policies wrong or even offensive. It can be challenging to help them stay curious and refrain from shutting down, both culturally and linguistically.
In the French policy classroom, I find it helpful to create space from students’ emotional reactivities—a metaphorical expanse that allows for perspective-taking and deeper analysis. So before we debate, we read, and we listen. We examine the history and events that led to the implementation of these policies. We think together about how a group of people might arrive at a particular way of approaching immigration, or a changing culture. Students who are 18–22 years old are primed for this type of exploration; faculty who have taught for 20+ years are familiar with most reactions and find these classes easy to orchestrate. I feel confident in this space as an educator, and I enjoy it immensely. However, this ease and experience can lead to making assumptions about what students think, and I wanted to gain a fresh perspective myself. So I decided to try something new.
When I applied to Bacca, I knew I wanted to incorporate in my teaching experiment some aspect of the broad interdisciplinary approach that characterizes the Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum program that I direct. This program puts courses in world languages in conversation with large introductory courses across the university’s many schools and programs. For example, we offer an introductory music theory class in Italian, a marketing course in Chinese, Environmental Studies in German, and an introduction to Global Health in Hindi. I wondered whether this kind of pedagogical structure could be scaled up somehow: could we develop more language tutorials in additional languages and cultures that would explore Public Policy from distinct perspectives? And could we all work together in a translanguaging space to share our experiences?
I decided to jump in with both feet. Over the summer, I applied for an internal grant from the Office of Global Affairs that supported four faculty to create half-credit Public Policy tutorials in Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish that would run alongside the PubPol 155 Spring 2023 course. I landed on five policy issues to explore in our separate languages: culture, language, human rights, immigration, and the environment. Meanwhile, in the fall Bacca Fellows’ group, I asked for feedback on rubrics for shared course assignments, including a policy memo that each language section would assign its students. I reserved a large room once a month during the spring semester, when our heterogenous group of language students could share their findings with one another. It seemed like the right structure, but there was no plan yet for those 75-minute class sessions. Sometimes you have a vision, but the vision is unclear. I kept trudging along, somewhat uncertainly.
January came around fast. On the first day of classes, each faculty member met with their own group of 4-8 students to explain the course and begin to build class community. For the second class session, we all met with an expert guest speaker to ground our thinking in public policy: Manoj Mohanan energized our group of 24 students, conducting the class in English. The following week, we returned to our separate language sections to examine linguistic policies in our various languages. In my class, two students examined French laws that fined companies who used English in their advertisements; another focused on how Quebec incentivized French language learning by providing free language classes at immigrant-owned businesses.
For our second shared session in English, we had agreed on a jigsaw structure to transform our homogeneous language groups into heterogeneous English-speaking groups. My French students would present their research on linguistic policy to students in Chinese, Russian, and Spanish via concurrent digital poster sessions. These logistics were tricky: the class was 75 minutes and had to be divided into two concurrent sessions, with time to circulate and set up. Two language tutorials had eight students, and two had four. One student would be absent. As I tried to create the groups, I was reminded of taking the GRE. A part of me longed for the simplicity of a single course.
On the day of our combined event, I was nervous. We positioned six pairs of students throughout the large room. Each faculty member introduced themself and their class, and then we turned it over to the students, who had prepared presentations about their findings. While we hoped they would find commonalities in their research, we worried the presentations would be dry, or lack context. Would they engage one another? Would we need to prompt them, to intervene to keep the session moving?
I walked around the room. I watched. I listened. The groups were deep in conversation, sharing their research with their peers. They compared policies in France and in Russia. They raised questions about culture, history, and language that had been absent from the English language PubPol 155 course. I looked at my Spanish-speaking colleague, who was also in the Bacca Fellows group, and remarked on how well it was going. She said “Of course. We just needed to get out of their way.”
Juanita Vargas Ibáñez and Amanda Rey Dominguez share their research on Quebec’s linguistic policies to students in Spanish, Russian, and Chinese listen in. Photo by Deb Reisinger.
This comment was just what I needed to hear. And it resonated with what I knew about our students, who had been hard at work on their projects and who were excited to discuss their research. It was clear, too, that my role in these 75 minutes was a new one in my pedagogical experience. As I reflect on it now at the end of this Bacca year, I realize that my role was to model perspective taking, and to structure an opportunity for sharing and exchanging knowledge within that framework. And it was done.
This course was developed as an experiment—teaching and learning about public policy issues in different regions and countries, in four different languages. Watching these students come together on that Monday in February, I realize that I should have trusted it all along—the students were in charge of their own learning. By providing them a structure to share their research, we had also offered them an intellectual space to inhabit. There was no judging, and no silence. The students were talking.
IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Deb Reisinger.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deb Reisinger
