Revisiting Validity in Research With Multilingual Learners: Moving From a Monolingual to a Multilingual Lens on Research Quality

A critical revisiting of research methods with multilingual learners raises issues of validity that are often unaddressed in current discussions of research quality. Though validity is conceptualized and assessed differently across research traditions, validity broadly describes the production of findings that are credible and trustworthy. The historically monolingual lens of research methodologies has led to conceptions of validity that are inadequate for ensuring that reported findings “fit the data” in research with multilingual learners. In this article, I describe a retrospective inquiry to critically reassess how current paradigms of validity might be reconceptualized in research with multilingual learners. Through a reexamination of research practices from two of my own studies, this article considers three ways that current monolingual paradigms of validity should be expanded in research with multilingual learners to work toward multilingual conceptualizations of research quality. This article then offers guidance to aid other researchers in taking up issues of validity in the design and reporting of research with multilingual learners.