Leveraging Glocal Linguistic Landscapes to Raise Preservice Teacher Candidates’ Critical Language Awareness: Pitfalls and Potential From Three International Telecollaboration Projects

Telecollaboration projects can help preservice teachers reflect on their own fluid identities, intrinsically connected with their language practices. This paper details three multi-institutional, multicountry projects and investigates the role of instructed translanguaging for positive identity development, the use of linguistic landscapes for Critical Language Awareness (CLA), and the potential of the literacies-centered Linguistic Landscape in Second Language Teaching and Learning (LLinL2TL) pedagogy. Twenty-one preservice teacher candidates from the US state of Texas and 20 candidates from southeastern Türkiye collaborated during the Fall 2020 semester; 20 candidates from southern México and 8 candidates from the same Texas university collaborated during Fall 2021; and 21 teacher candidates from northern México and 9 candidates from Texas partnered during Fall 2022 to co-create LLinL2TL lesson plans. Results demonstrate that although the LLinL2TL pedagogical model facilitated collaborative lesson plan creation between international partners, students quickly became aware of the power relations in their languaging practices. All US students became aware that the communicative burden fell upon Turkish and Mexican students, making the American students feel incompetent. Pedagogical translanguaging, coupled with the focus on glocal linguistic landscapes, facilitated learner agency in meaning-making and helped address these issues of Critical Language Awareness.