Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

Summer 7-15-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

August 2026

Department

Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry

College Granting Degree

College of Education

Department Granting Degree

Curriculum and Instruction

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Sabrina F. Sembiante

Abstract

Emergent bilingual children enter early childhood classrooms with rich, dynamic linguistic repertoires that span languages, cultural practices, and ways of knowing. Socioemotional learning (SEL) often fails to meaningfully incorporate children’s linguistic and cultural repertoires, reflecting critiques that many SEL frameworks privilege individualistic, culturally narrow competencies that may marginalize learners from diverse backgrounds. This is particularly consequential in early childhood dual language bilingual education (DLBE), where children's heritage languages are central to authentic emotional connection and identity development, and where empirical models for culturally sustaining SEL remain limited. Through a participatory design research approach structured around iterative cycles of collaborative inquiry, this study examines how Spanish/English bilingual kindergarten teachers conceptualize, plan, and enact translanguaging-informed Transformative SEL (TSEL; Jagers et al., 2019) practices in a Spanish-dominant DLBE school in Colombia. Three research questions guided the study: (RQ1) What are Spanish/English bilingual kindergarten teachers' beliefs around translanguaging-informed TSEL practices? (RQ2) How do teachers plan and perceive potential translanguaging-informed TSEL practices? (RQ3) How and when do teachers enact translanguaging-informed TSEL practices? Working alongside three kindergarten teacher co researchers, data were generated through semi-structured interviews, teacher reflections, classroom observations, and instructional planning meetings. Findings organized around each research question illuminate the multilayered nature of teachers' beliefs, planning, and enactment. Teachers positioned children's heritage language as essential to authentic emotional connection and understood TSEL constructs as deeply relational. In planning, teachers consistently adopted an asset-based orientation, extending children's cultural backgrounds and lived experiences into TSEL spaces. In enactment, teachers drew upon translanguaging practices across structured and impromptu classroom moments, including STEM-integrated activities, democratic practices, and dialogic conflict resolution, to activate all five TSEL constructs. Results offer an empirically grounded portrait of how translanguaging pedagogy and TSEL operate in concert within a Global South educational context, extending existing literature beyond the predominantly monolingual, U.S.-based settings that have shaped TSEL scholarship. Findings illuminate the feasibility of culturally and linguistically sustaining approaches to SEL while foregrounding implications for teacher preparation, curriculum design, and future research in bilingual early childhood education.

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