Biliteracy practices in a primary science classroom: Insights from a bilingual learning materials project

Background: At the beginning of the roll-out of Mother Tongue Based Bilingual Education (MTbBE) in South Africa, biliteracies in an African language and English still present an ideological frontier to be crossed. While the negative consequences of monolingual English instruction from Grade 4 have been well documented, there is little research on biliteracy practices in content subjects at this level. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore biliteracies in learning materials and classroom practices and their impact on learner achievement. Setting: The project was carried out in one Grade 4 science classroom in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The teacher and 42 learners were the focal participants. Methods: The article draws from an ethnographically informed participatory intervention study during 2023. A sample was taken from 168 photographs taken from the Grade 4 science classroom of bilingual texts. The texts were analysed using discourse analysis and Sebba’s framework for multilingual text analysis in order to answer the research questions. Results: Children read bilingual materials in different language varieties; children wrote in more than one language and in a meshed register; and bilingual writing in a bilingual assessment produced higher achievement than that of children who wrote a monolingual English test. Conclusion: The variety of biliteracies in which the teacher and children engaged point towards the need for both separate biliteracy and translanguaging literacies in developing children’s writing. Contribution: The study contributes to the scholarship on biliteracies in the context of MTbBE and Southern schooling more broadly.