Critical teacher education for equitable learning in multilingual classrooms: a possible way forward

ABSTRACT

Addressing the ongoing calls to reform teacher education to prepare future teachers to serve students from diverse backgrounds, this introduction reviews recent developments in teacher education to situate our thematic issue on critical teacher education for equitable learning in multilingual classrooms. The five empirical papers and two commentaries included in this issue focus on the connection between language, power, and critical consciousness to address equity concerns in teacher education as it pertains to supporting multilingual learners, asking: how do teacher education programs prepare teachers to work with diverse students in schools where there exists a long-standing history of marginalization and discrimination based on racial, economic, social backgrounds? In this introductory paper, we discuss the contributions of the papers included in the issue and share a vision for new ways for reimagining teacher education for multilingual learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical consciousness
• critical teacher education
• multilingualism
• multilingual learners

Introduction

Despite several attempts to reform the field, there is an “equity problem” (Cochran-Smith, 2023) in teacher education in supporting multilingual learners as racial, linguistic, and cultural differences continue to create fissures in school and society. With an estimated 281 million international migrants worldwide as indicated by the latest World Migration Report (McAuliffe & Oucho, 2024), the current trend of global mobility and linguistic diversity due to immigration and forced displacement has resulted in increased need on the part of educators to effectively tackle issues of equity that have arisen from the global flows of people and cultures, and hence address the needs and challenges faced by learners of diverse backgrounds (Hernández, 2017; Lauwo et al., 2022). While there is an increasing commitment to address issues of power and privilege in the broader field of education, teacher education has not adequately responded to the problem of systemic inequity and inequality (Zeichner, 2011). In her widely cited paper published more than two decades ago Cochran-Smith (2003) noted:

[I]f we are to have teachers who are change agents, we must also have teacher educators who are prepared to be the same. Conceptualizing the education of teacher educators as a process of continual and systematic inquiry wherein participants question their own and others’ assumptions and construct local as well as public knowledge appropriate to the changing contexts in which they work provides a way to think about it as a process of change. In this sense, the education of teacher educators from an inquiry stance can be understood as playing a significant part in the future of society. (p. 25)

The question persists: how do teacher education programs prepare teachers to work with diverse students in schools where there exists a long-standing history of marginalization and discrimination based on diverse racial, economic, social and linguistic backgrounds?

Language teacher education is a socially constructed and situated activity (Freeman & Johnson, 1998) and a dynamic process that involves cultural, historical, humanizing, and spatial factors that contribute to learning (De Costa et al., 2023; Ehrenfeld, 2022; Peercy et al., 2024). Expanding on these activities and processes, we argue that an ecological perspective to teacher education contributes to equitable practices in multilingual contexts by addressing the dynamic factors and attending to the contextual interrelationships that influence teaching and learning. Broadly, an ecological perspective understands that learning is always shaped by interrelations of individuals, programs, institutions, and ideas in context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Peña‐Pincheira & De Costa, 2021; Valencia et al., 2009).

Before introducing the five articles and two commentaries in the special issue and their relationship to our central question, we will situate the articles within the broader historical context in teacher education in relation to multilingual learners. We begin with a discussion on the current state of scholarship on multilingual learners and teacher education.

The state of teacher education in relation to multilingual students

In light of recent issues that students from marginalized communities continue to experience, teacher education must focus its attention on addressing inequalities pertaining to language (Cochran-Smith, 2023). Dating back to P. Freire’s (1970) notion of critical consciousness and critical pedagogy in the 1970s, the field of language teacher education has approached critical issues in diverse ways by challenging racism (De Costa, 2021; Kubota, 2020), native speakerism (Holliday, 2006) and monolingualism (García, 2009; Lippi-Green, 2012), looking at language usage from a multilingual and heteroglossic standpoint (Bakhtin, 1981) – often in combination of these multiple elements (e.g., De Costa et al., 2021) – while also acknowledging the hybrid language practices of multilingual people (García, 2009).

There is a growing body of research and pedagogical materials addressing multiculturalism and teacher education (e.g., Cochran-Smith et al., 2003; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Ladson‐Billings, 1995; Sleeter, 2009). However, there are few empirical and theoretical studies for preparing mainstream teacher candidates (TCs) to work with multilingual learners (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; de Jong & Gao, 2023). Even those that exist are mostly in disciplinary silos (Bale, 2024), ignoring the complex and interconnected relationship between language and content knowledge. While research on teacher education has addressed the major components of a knowledge base for pre-service teachers (PSTs) (de Oliveira & Burke, 2015; Freeman, 2016), the necessary knowledge base for supporting multilingual learners has yet to be adequately addressed (Peercy et al., 2024). As such, there have been calls for reforms in teacher education programs to equip PSTs with the dispositions and skills needed to critically engage with concerns around diversity, race, and language (Allweiss & Al-Adeimi, 2024; Bale et al., 2023; De Costa & Van Gorp, 2023; Hawkins & Norton, 2009).

To date, the equity problem has been examined through the lens of translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014; MacSwan, 2022; Tian & King, 2023), critical multilingual language awareness (Burton et al., 2024; Cárdenas Curiel et al., 2024; De Costa & Van Gorp, 2023; Deroo & Ponzio, 2023; García, 2017), critical plurilingualism (Flores, 2013; Galante et al., 2022; Lau & Van Viegen, 2020; Piccardo, 2013), raciolinguistic ideologies and subjectivities (Bale et al., 2023; Daniels & Varghese, 2020; Flores & Rosa, 2015, 2022; Rosa, 2019), and teacher agency and activism (Cummins, 2023; Peña‐Pincheira & De Costa, 2021; Tsang, 2021). Most recently, Zhang-Wu and Tian (forthcoming) have an issue in the Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices titled Unpacking the Complex Journey of Developing Critical Language Awareness: Identity, Resistance, and Transformation. These general trends profoundly shape our approaches to shaping critical teacher education for multilingual learners. However, while theories and pedagogies of translanguaging and plurilingualism, among others, are becoming more prevalent in K-12 language teacher education (Pérez-Peitx et al., 2019), there is still a gap (with the notable exception of few empirical studies such as J. A. Freire et al., 2024; Heiman et al., 2024) in understanding how teacher education programs can better prepare PSTs to become critically conscious educators in multilingual contexts. By engaging with this conspicuous and significant gap, the five empirical articles and two commentaries in this special issue speak directly to the equity issue situated at the nexus of language, power, and critical consciousness.

The contributions of this special issue

The contributions to this special issue address the equity issue in teacher education through their shared understanding that teacher education plays a crucial role in shaping the ideologies and practices of the PSTs (also referred to as TCs in other contexts), as they embark on a journey of becoming classroom practitioners. Through our shared vision, we understand that there is no critical language education without critical language teacher education. The need to shed light on the crucial role that teacher preparation programs play in shaping PSTs’ beliefs and practices to respond to the unequal power structures and practices in multilingual societies underpins this special issue. Our special issue takes up this challenge by addressing agency, identity, and ideology concerns among PSTs in their work with multilingual students in educational institutions, as they engage with developing and enacting critical consciousness in diverse ways, albeit with varying results.

In their article, “Translanguaging for critical multilingual language awareness: Preparing TCs to support multilingual learners in classrooms,” Jennifer Burton, Wales Wong, and Shakina Rajendram propose translanguaging for critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) to challenge inequalities and promote linguistic diversity, inclusion, and social justice in classrooms, as well as to recenter criticality in language teacher education. In their qualitative study, working in collaboration with four TCs, they analyze how TCs prepare to support multilingual learners in elementary classrooms. Drawing upon several data sources from a three-year research project, they found that their participants’ backgrounds, learning experiences, and identities played a role in their beliefs about supporting multilingual learners. Their study highlights the need for TCs to be provided with specific learning opportunities to support them in developing a translanguaging stance for CMLA in order to support multilingual learners. However, their findings indicate that there is a disconnect between what TCs were learning in their classes and the experiences in their practicum placements with their associate teachers. The authors thus demonstrate that while teacher education programs play a significant role in shaping TCs’ learning about supporting multilinguals and translanguaging, this critical work needs to exist as part of a program and school-wide culture and policy that supports and sustains multilingual practices as the norm.

Lucía Cárdenas Curiel, Laxmi Prasad Ojha, Luqing Zang, and Meiheng Chen also build on the theoretical framework of CMLA in their article, “The best way to get to know a student is to know their community: Fostering pre-service teachers’ critical multilingual language awareness through linguistic community walks,” and document the impact of engaging PSTs with the local community surrounding the schools where they are placed for their mentored teaching practice. Arguing for the need for teacher education programs to engage the PSTs with the local community in multiple ways, including embracing the linguistic landscape and resources available to multilingual people, they illustrate the development of PSTs’ CMLA as they critically reflect on entrenched language hierarchies, their own positionality in relation to the educational opportunities available, and ways to support multilingual students for their academic success. Cárdenas Curiel and colleagues’ contribution highlights the importance of engaging PSTs in local community spaces, emphasizing the value of place-based approaches to teacher education (Thacker & Bodle, 2022). Methodologically, the authors situate their study as Self-Study of Teacher Educators (S-STEP) (Peercy & Sharkey, 2020), an approach to teacher education research where researchers position themselves as reflective practitioners who engage in a continuous process to improve their own teaching practices and teacher education programs to make them relevant to changing times.

Angelica Galante and John Wayne dela Cruz’s article, “The fall of bilingualism: Teacher candidates’ voices on the implementation of critical plurilingualism in English language teaching,” adopts a critical plurilingual lens to investigate PSTs’ conceptualization of plurilingualism, and their perceptions of its affordances and challenges prior to and after implementation in TCs’s practicum. The PSTs in their study experimented with plurilingual pedagogies, designed tasks and taught lessons over a four-month period. Taking into account the unique context of official bilingual French/English policies in Montreal, Canada, the authors’ argue that there is a link between critical plurilingualism and decolonization, specifically in PSTs transgressing colonial mind-sets. Drawing upon five data sources and using inductive content analysis, their study reveals the importance of critical plurilingualism to support local education policies for future teachers not only in promoting Indigenous worldviews, knowledge, and history, but also in taking into account diversity among students. Further, PSTs in their study fostered learner-centered classroom environments, letting students take control over their own learning and act agentively over when and how to use their plurilingual repertories.

Dario Luis Banegas, Michael S. Budzenski, and Fang Jackson-Yang examine the projective agency of PSTs, in their article, “Enhancing pre-service teachers’ projective agency for diverse and multilingual classrooms through a course on curriculum development.” Situated in a master’s program at a university in the United Kingdom, their mixed-methods study indicates that PSTs showed positive beliefs about teacher agency. At the beginning of the course, the PSTs’ conceptualization of teacher agency was characterized by limited opportunities for concerted changes given the conditions of their teaching placement. However, as they progressed in their course, PSTs began to imagine themselves as agentive educators, while still acknowledging the policy constraints in their contexts. This study advances a model of projective teacher agency by drawing on a trans-perspective of language teacher agency and contributes a temporal dimension to conceptualization of teacher agency, a highly underrepresented construct in the field.

Lastly, Laura Mahalingappa, in her article, “Development of linguistic critical consciousness of multilingual preservice teachers of color,” examines the effects of a CMLA coursework on development of critical consciousness related to language, identity, ideology and culturally sustaining pedagogies among multilingual PSTs of color. The paper highlights the voices of teachers of color, an underrepresented body of research in the field of teacher education that is dominated by a heavy majority of white PSTs. Based on the ANOVA analyses of 23-point Likert scale pre- and post-survey data from 48 preservice teachers, Mahalingappa illuminates the potential of a carefully designed course on supporting PSTs in envisioning equitable opportunities for all students in their future classrooms by adopting an asset-based approach to teaching and learning diverse multilingual students. Mahalingappa assessed the four measures of linguistic critical consciousness and found that there was a statistically significant change in (a) perceptions related to language ideology, (b) perceptions related to supporting students’ first language outside of school, and (c) perceptions related to critical perspectives. However, the survey results did not show a statistically significant change in PSTs’ perceptions related to advocating for students’ first language(s) in the classroom, potentially because they already held positive attitudes about incorporating multilingual practices in their classrooms, even before they enrolled in the course due to their own personal lived experiences as multilingual individuals.

Following the five empirical papers are two commentaries, the first by Jeff Bale and the second by Jamy Stillman and Deborah Palmer. Bale discusses the evolution of research and practices in preparing mainstream classroom teachers to work effectively with multilingual students. Specifically, he acknowledges the emergence of a robust line of inquiry that has explored how TCs perceive and organize their instruction for multilingualism and highlights the importance of diverse research designs and theoretical perspectives in understanding teacher-candidate learning in multilingual contexts. Bale further reflects on his own background and experiences, emphasizing the complexities of language, race, and class dynamics in education. Including artwork by Joanne Weber, he illustrates the complexity of abyssal thinking and the need for researchers to recognize their positionalities to foster genuine collaborative relationships with the communities with whom they work. Bale then discusses the importance of explicit definitions and conceptual clarity in research, referencing examples from the articles in the special issue. The need for ongoing reflection and refinement of key terms, particularly in relation to critical perspectives on language, race, and education is emphasized. Another point raised is the necessity of bridging disciplinary divides within teacher education research to gain a more comprehensive understanding of teacher candidate learning. The article advocates integrating insights from broader literature on K-12 teacher education to inform practices in preparing teachers for multilingual classrooms. Finally, Bale reminds us of the complexity and non-linearity of teacher-candidate learning, highlighting the need for holistic approaches that consider the diverse factors influencing pedagogy. Such approaches encourage researchers to embrace complexity and multiplicity in their work as well as to reflect on the implications of these ideas for advancing the field of teacher education for multilingual learners.

In the second commentary, Jamy Stillman and Deborah Palmer discuss the crucial role of teacher educators in preparing TCs to effectively work with multilingual learners, stressing the need for teacher education programs to adopt innovative approaches and cultivate teachers’ critical awareness of language, power dynamics, and identity. Drawing on the example of the Denver Metro area, with its rich history of linguistic diversity and activism for bilingual education, the authors argue that teachers ought to develop a deep understanding of language, history, and social context in order to effectively support multilingual learners. Stillman and Palmer share insights from their efforts to transform their own program at the University of Colorado Boulder, underscoring the pressing need for teacher education programs to confront issues of whiteness and racism, while actively striving to create inclusive and equitable learning environments for all TCs. They call for a more robust research base to inform the transformation of teacher education programs to better support multilingual learners, as well as advocate for an approach that integrates critical language awareness into all aspects of teacher preparation, ultimately aiming to foster critically conscious teachers who can advocate for equity and justice in education.

Together, the five featured articles and two commentaries in this special issue provide a sense of what it means to consider the equity issue at the intersection of language, power, and critical consciousness as a central and imminent goal of teacher education (Stillman & Palmer, 2024). They also shed light on PSTs’ needs, strengths, and experiences both inside classrooms and within communities as the latter learn to support multilingual learners in diverse contexts.

Common threads: examining critical approaches to teacher education

The five empirical papers included in this special issue discuss various ways teacher education programs in different contexts prepare PSTs to foster critical perspectives on issues related to education for multilingual students. Collectively, these studies report on the important work done in the teacher education programs at five universities that are located across three countries where English is used as the dominant language. These papers discuss the use of various activities such as pedagogical translanguaging, linguistic community walk, multilingual identity portraits, critical literacy autobiography, reflections, lesson plans, advocacy letters, and multilingual learner profiles to raise PSTs’ critical awareness related to language and power. These studies adopt a variety of methodological approaches including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research, and use a different analytical lenses such as inferential statistics, qualitative content analysis, thematic analysis, as well as ANOVA analyses. Despite notable differences in their context and approaches, we see these papers connected by three main threads.

First, the papers share a commitment to the importance and value of multilingual learners’ diverse linguistic and cultural resources as central to addressing marginalization across racial, economic, and social lines. While the participants in Galante and dela Cruz’s (2024) study challenge conceptions of language as non-linear, multimodal and asymmetrical, their PST participants also understood that deficit views of learners and languages were tied to colonial history. For Banegas et al. (2024), their PSTs identified links between teacher agency and decolonizing the curriculum, and developed a growing interest in creating diverse, inclusive, and multilingual learning spaces. The participants in Burton et al. (2024) draw upon various activities such as multilingual word walls and digital storytelling to position multilingualism as a skill and counter dominant monolingual and monocultural norms around language and identity, as modeled by their professor. Cárdenas Curiel et al. (2024) engage PSTs in linguistic community walks to heighten their awareness of the importance of pedagogical materials that accurately and authentically reflected the lived realities of the students in their classrooms, in an effort to deconstruct hegemonic perspectives that create hierarchies. Finally, Mahalingappa’s (2024) study highlights the significance of directed pedagogical interventions to support an asset-based approach to teaching multilingual learners, demonstrating that critical language awareness coursework had a significant impact on preservice teachers’ linguistic critical consciousness. These papers underscore an orientation toward multilingualism-as-a-resource (Burton & Rajendram, 2019; de Jong et al., 2019).

Another theme that the papers in this special issue address is related to supporting multilingual learners to access the language related demands of school and recognizing their dynamic language practices. Burton et al.’s (2024) study, for instance, reports how TCs believed in the value of making accommodations for the multilingual learners without lowering the expected standards for them. As a result of the introduction of the translanguaging pedagogy, TCs also felt the need to create a safe classroom for their multilingual learners to be able to be curious and experiment with their language free of judgment. The study also highlights TCs commitment to provide scaffolding and create flexible language practices to support multilingual learners’ language development. Similarly, Cárdenas Curiel et al. (2024) engage the PSTs in a linguistic community walk to support PSTs’ development as critical educators. The community walk drew attention to the lack of linguistic and cultural representations within the community and the need to create inclusive classrooms representative of students’ diverse backgrounds. The TCs’ participating in Galante and dela Cruz’s (2024) study echoes this as they were able to understand the value of flexible language practices in their classrooms after they taught the lessons incorporating plurilingual practices. Mahalingappa’s (2024) study shows similar results as PSTs showed their understanding of the importance of dynamic language practices reflective of multilingual people’s language practices and identities. Finally, Banegas et al. (2024), argue for translanguaging as a pedagogical practice central in harnessing multilingualism and promoting inclusion.

Finally, the papers discuss the reflexive and agentic choices teachers make in creating equitable educational opportunities for multilingual learners. Banegas et al. (2024) report how the participating PSTs in their study realized their agency in shaping the classroom practices that they could use to foster positive learning experiences for their diverse students. The study traces the development of positive attitudes in PSTs about their agency for professional development and critical teaching practice in fostering inclusive learning environments in multilingual classrooms. Cárdenas Curiel et al. (2024) asked the PSTs in their ESL methodology course to critically observe the linguistic resources available for multilingual people in the communities and reflect on their own identities and life experiences. In their reflections, White monolingual English-speaking PSTs acknowledged their own privilege of growing up in English-dominant communities in the US and envisioned the agentic role they could play in supporting multilingual students in their future classrooms. From a similar study conducted in Canada, Galante and dela Cruz (2024) demonstrate how their multilingual TCs reflected on their own experiences of implementing plurilingual practice. The TCs found plurilingual pedagogy useful in fostering learner agency, independence and collaboration which helped the students in taking control of their own learning. Mahalingappa (2024) discusses how PSTs in her study saw their role as agents of change to fight inequality by helping their future students from marginalized backgrounds succeed in school. Finally, the study by Burton et al. (2024) demonstrates that when TCs were provided with opportunities to reflect on their own linguistic and cultural resources then they were able to see translanguaging as a resource for all learners. These studies collectively conceptualize teachers as transformative intellectuals (Giroux, 1988) and highlight their role as policy makers (Menken & García, 2010) who can use their positions of influence to create equitable learning opportunities for all students. The studies also suggest that synergy between various stakeholders is needed for transformative changes to occur in teacher education.

Advancing the field: reimagining teacher education for multilingual learners

Given the long-standing history of racial, economic, and social inequality in schools, teacher education programs have a responsibility to prepare PSTs to play an agentic role in addressing these broader societal issues through the everyday pedagogical choices they make in their classrooms (Menken & García, 2010). The idea of teachers as active agents of social change has long been discussed in the extant literature (e.g., Fullan, 1993; Peña‐Pincheira & De Costa, 2021; Van der Heijden et al., 2015) as teachers can contribute to supporting “equitable educational outcomes for marginalized students” (Mills & Ballantyne, 2016, p. 263). This is only possible when teachers working with students from marginalized communities develop critical consciousness (Dorner et al., 2023; P. Freire, 1970) and are equipped with tools and skills necessary to support such students. As noted above, the major issue that needs to be addressed in teacher education is the equity problem (Cochran-Smith, 2023). Therefore, the core question with which we engage is: how can teacher education programs prepare future teachers to address this issue?

This special issue offers valuable insights on critical teacher education to prepare the next generation of teachers to support multilingual students. While the individual papers illustrate the potential of carefully designed teacher education courses on supporting PSTs’ development as critical educators who are willing and capable to embrace multilingual approaches to teach students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, they collectively also bring to our attention the need for a broader and program-wide incorporation of critical approaches to teacher education – something that is conspicuously lacking in the current knowledge base of teacher education due to the structures and disciplinary silos in teacher education (Bale, 2024).

Based on the insights developed collectively through the papers included in this issue, we argue for an ecological approach to addressing the issues of power and inequality which might require teacher education programs to embrace a holistic approach and broaden the knowledge base of future generations of educators. In our view, it is not possible to envision equitable educational practices in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms without rethinking the existing models of teacher education where courses focusing on teaching multilingual students are limited to a select number of courses, mainly attended by PSTs specializing in teaching multilingual students (Cárdenas Curiel et al., 2024); rather, we strongly advocate the need for all teachers – regardless of subject discipline – to be made aware of the challenges encountered by the multilingual students in their respective classrooms. This is an area of growth that the field of teacher education needs to advance. While developing critical perspectives on a few focal issues is possible through one or two courses offered in teacher education programs, it is important to:

• develop a critical consciousness (Freire, 1970) about broader social and educational issues (especially those faced by multilingual learners);

• ensure PSTs gain the necessary knowledge, orientation and skills to be able to make meaningful contributions toward disrupting normative and hegemonic ideologies deeply rooted in the current educational institutions (Stillman & Palmer, 2024);

• adopt an asset-based pedagogical orientation to embrace the diversity of multilingual students (Bale et al., 2023; Lucas & Villegas, 2013);

• model equitable classroom environments through critical, reflexive and inclusive pedagogical practices in teacher education programs (Karam & Kibler, 2024).

Recent scholarship has shown the potential of innovative approaches such as place- and community-based teacher education (De Costa et al., 2023; Thacker & Bodle, 2022; Zeichner et al., 2016) that emphasize collaborative partnerships between university-based teacher education programs with local schools and communities. This kind of partnership can be a starting point to situate critical teacher education in line with the changing demographics and social issues in the local communities as PSTs think about education for their future students while understanding their cultural traditions, life experiences and available resources to succeed in multilingual societies. Partnering with schools and communities with diverse student populations can also be helpful in decentering and decolonizing teacher education (Campano et al., 2016; De Costa et al., 2023; Phyak & De Costa, 2021). However, recruiting and retention of teachers from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds can be the first step toward establishing a long-term solution to the enduring problem in education where the dominant groups, such as monolingual White people in the US (Carter Andrews et al., 2019), comprise a vast majority of the teaching force. Further substantive work is needed to make future teachers aware of the local sociopolitical realities in which they work.

While we do not believe in prescribing one approach to all programs, we think it is imperative for teacher education programs to be situated around broader socio-political issues including language and power that this special issue has highlighted. To that end, we see the contribution of this special issue is consistent with other developments in the field such as culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson‐Billings, 1995), culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2000), critical language teacher education (Hawkins & Norton, 2009), and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014). Finally, as noted by Hornberger and McKay (2010), we call upon educational researchers and teacher educators to work as change agents and argue that “we must do more than study the relationships between language, society and power – we must do what we can do to change them” (p. 228). Rather than focusing on individual agency, Priestley et al. (2015) argue for the incorporation of an ecological approach as people exercise their agency “through the interplay of personal capacities and the resources, affordances and constraints of the environment by means of which individuals act” (p. 19). We envision a critical and ecological approach to teacher education, which considers all aspects of society, including language, power and hierarchy, from an intersectional approach (Artiles, 2019; Crenshaw, 1989). Such an approach is needed to realize the potential of transformative justice in teacher education (De Costa, 2018; Souto-Manning, 2022; Souto-Manning & Stillman, 2020; Winn, 2018).

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their critical and timely review of the manuscripts. We appreciate the support from Jeff MacSwan, and his editorial team for creating a valuable opportunity space and providing necessary logistical support to publish this special issue in the International Multilingual Research Journal. We are thankful to John Chi, Editorial Assistant of the Journal, for his support throughout the process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).