EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFL TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF TRANSLANGUAGING IN RURAL AREAS OF KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

The complexity of the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices was broadly recognized in previous studies highlighting how due to teachers’ monoglossic ideologies, they were inclined to limit the use of translanguaging. Notwithstanding, teachers tended to apply translanguaging unintentionally and occasionally in their EFL classes. As a result, this created a discrepancy between EFL teachers’ stated monoglossic ideologies and their heteroglossic practices. While there is some evidence of this happening, little is known about rural EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices of translanguaging and how their relationship is built in the system of internal and external factors. This study aims to understand and examine what supports and hinders teachers’ beliefs and practices of translanguaging in a rural area of Kazakhstan based on García and Kleyn’s (2016) framework of translanguaging pedagogy and Buehl and Beck’s (2015) framework of external and internal factors. Thus, employing a collective case study design and involving semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, with 5 teachers from 5 rural schools, this study found that teachers mainly held positive beliefs toward translanguaging. In addition, the study findings revealed the major and substantial district-specific factor, the school’s location, which was found to have a powerful effect on teachers’ perceptions and actual use of translanguaging, as this factor activated other school-related and classroom-related factors, which also affected teachers’ belief-practice consistency and inconsistency. The findings of this study carry essential implications for the field of language education, such as reconsidering pre-service EFL teachers’ curriculum and parental involvement in students’ language learning. The inquiry also adds evidence about EFL teachers’ teaching conditions in rural areas and provides an understanding of variations of schools located in one rural region.