Blurring English language binaries: a decolonial analysis of multilingualism with(in) EAL/D education

ABSTRACT

This article aims to visibilise the opportunities for decolonising standardised language practices for multilingual students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) in Australian schools. We suggest that a decolonising approach to language education would value the multilingual, non-standard, and diverse language practices of learners. Using the Australian state of Queensland as a case study, we trace examples of decolonising language practices highlighted by teachers in focus groups and analyse these examples using a theoretically- informed, reflexive thematic analysis to unpack how teachers disrupt colonial binaries in EAL/D education. Our findings show that teachers encourage multilingualism, relationality, and the discomfort of unknowing but are confronted with practical barriers that limit their capacity to enact this further. As such, we outline the implication for EAL/D education and teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• English as an additional language or dialect
• decoloniality
• multilingualism
• Australia
• education

Introduction

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of students’ multilingual resources in educational contexts (García and Kleyn 2016; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015; Turner, Keary, and Tour 2022; Wu and Lin 2019). In particular, decolonial approaches to language education attempt to centre multilingual students as interlocutors with the agency to resist and challenge dominant language practices that position multilinguals as ‘Other’ (Veronelli 2016). Decolonial approaches to language education also call into question notions of standardisation and native-speakerism based on hegemonic, Eurocentric ways of using language (Heinrichs 2021; Makoni and Pennycook 2005; Veronelli 2016). Such ways of using language have been described by Gabriela Veronelli (2016) as the coloniality of languaging: an aspect in the dehumanisation of colonised populations via racialisation that sees Eurocentric language practice as universal by positing literacy, standardised grammar, and a written alphabet as prerequisites for civilised human communication. Thus, from a colonial perspective, to lack a capacity to use colonial language practices is to lack language and humanity (Hooks 1994; Macedo 2019; Veronelli 2016).

The decolonial turn in language education has further seen calls for a rethinking of school systems where the medium of instruction (i.e. English) ‘still exerts oppressive control’ over Indigenous and minority students and their languages (DeGraff 2019, xii). Many scholars and educators within the field of language education advocate abandoning the elitism and linguistic hierarchies associated with standardised (often monolingual) language practices and imperial/colonial languages in favour of those that rupture, provoke, challenge, and resist the coloniality of languaging (Macedo 2019). Not only are such decolonising approaches important for building inclusive classrooms reflective of multilingual and multicultural contexts such as Australia (ABS 2018), but they also represent a means to sustain students’ home languages and associated sense of identity (Eisenchlas, Schalley, and Guillemin 2013), as well as reduce linguistic discrimination (Dryden and Dovchin 2022).

Our aim in this article is to visibilise how EAL/D students’ multilingual practices might be included in Australian classrooms by their schools and teachers in ways that challenge the coloniality of languaging. Multilingual practices within a decolonial framework include a broad array of non-standard, alternative, creative and emerging ways of using language. Such practices are inspired by educational linguistic and sociolinguistic work which has been noted for its decolonising potential including translanguaging (Garcia and Wei 2013), transemioticising (Wu and Lin 2019), affective and embodied approaches (Heinrichs 2021). Promotion of these practices in Australian classrooms is currently hindered by the foregrounding of Standard Australian English (SAE), pressure from curricula and standardised testing to focus on a narrow set of English literacy skills such as reading and writing (Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas 2015) and a pervasive monolingual mindset that relegates multilingual practices to the side unless they work to serve economic and employment goals (Clyne 2008). These obstacles have led us to pose the following questions as part of an exploratory study:

In what ways do teachers in Australia include EAL/D students’ multilingual repertoires in their classrooms?

How might this disrupt the coloniality of languaging and its associated binaries?

We discuss our findings and analysis in relation to these questions by exploring specific binaries that have related to teachers’ examples from their classroom experience working with EAL/D students in Australian schools.

Decolonising language practices

EAL/D students constitute approximately 25% of school-aged students in Australia although this is higher in some schools (ACARA 2022). These students speak a number of different languages. In the state of Queensland, the common languages other than English spoken at home include: Mandarin, Samoan, Vietnamese, Italian, Japanese, German, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Hindi, Punjabi, Korean, Arabic, Tagalog, Spanish, Malayalam, Filipino, Cantonese, Thai and French (ABS 2022). Moreover, EAL/D students come from diverse educational backgrounds depending on their pathway into Australian education. For instance, EAL/D students may be migrants, refugees with some or no schooling, international students, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students and/or children of d/Deaf¹ adults who use Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (ACARA 2022). The linguistic and educational backgrounds of EAL/D students in Australia indicates significant variation in their linguistic repertoires to which they are then expected to add Standard Australian English. Supporting the diversity of EAL/D students’ linguistic repertoires is a key tenet for decolonising language practices in educational contexts (Kubota 2022). Valuing EAL/D students’ potential for multilingual talk is another specific aspect of decolonising language practices. As Bagga-Gupta (2017) notes, there has been a privileging of monolingual (oral) talk in language education despite the role of multiple languages and language practices in students’ daily lives and learning. Language education policies tend to promote standardised language, therefore, devaluing and constraining the diverse languages and language practices students bring to the classroom.

In recent decades, decolonising language practices have been characterised as those which challenge, transgress or (re)configure the coloniality of languaging. The coloniality of languaging (Heinrichs 2021; Veronelli 2016) encompasses a broad array of fixed and rigid language practices tied to monolingualism, standardised grammar, written language, and native-speakerism. These elements of the coloniality of languaging work to erase, devalue, diminish and invisibilise other languages and language practices that do not fit the strict parameters of the coloniality of languaging such as bi- or multi-lingualism, and languages with oral traditions. From a colonial perspective, speakers of other languages have also been positioned as less-than as they are associated with not having a ‘real’ language and assumed to be subhuman as being humans means having a ‘real’ language (Maldonado-Torres 2007). In the context of education, the coloniality of languaging imposes regulations as to what constitutes valid language practices including the ability to communicate in an objective manner through formal, academic language based on standard grammar and conventions (French 2021). Specifically in relation to English, the coloniality of languaging, standardisation of language works to relegitimise and maintain English ‘for a new international English language hierarchy’ (French 2021, 11). Additionally, processes of standardisation and demands for translation into colonial languages have been criticised for playing into the colonial demand for hegemonic knowledge and erasure of difference rather than accepting a state of unknowing untranslated alternatives (Vázquez 2011). Decolonial scholars have also critiqued the ways in which multiculturalism sacrifices the values of marginalised groups in the interest of nation-state cooperation and by over-emphasising the importance of culture which has led to linguistic profiling and linguistic hierarchies (Ndhlovu 2016; Zembylas 2023). This results in the positioning of standardised language practices, such as SAE, as superior to non-standard practices often used by EAL/D students. A decolonial approach to language education will therefore ‘expose students to multiple types of knowledges about language’ (Pennycook and Makoni 2019, 85) and allow students to draw on diverse linguistic/multilingual sources (85). We posit further that a decolonising language practice in education requires a rupturing of the binaries that attempt to separate and hierarchise them (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Binaries highlighted by the coloniality of languaging.

Supporting EAL/D students’ diverse language practices in Australian schools

Support resources

Support for EAL/D students’ language practices in Australian schools tends to centre on the goal of proficiency and mastery of SAE with some provision for drawing on students’ other languages. For instance, in the majority of mainstream classrooms in schools in Australia, content is taught and assessed through the medium of SAE. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA 2022), the body responsible for the Australian Curriculum, states that ‘all teachers are responsible for teaching the language and literacy demands of their learning areas’ when working with EAL/D students in mainstream classrooms (5) as well as for understanding that EAL/D students already speak one or more languages or dialects and that ‘this language knowledge is an advantage’ (7). It has been noted, however, that often the value of other languages and/or multilingualism in Australian schooling is limited to the benefits afforded to developing English language literacy and assimilation (Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas 2015). Dixon (2013) makes a valuable critique of standardised testing measures such as the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) that tend to pit EAL/D students against SAE-speaking children. Focusing her study on Aboriginal students within the Australian education system, she argues that despite Australian Indigenous people’s desire for their children to be multilingual, the use of non-standard English features is regarded simplistically as ‘non-attainment of literacy’. The difference from the ‘norm’ (i.e. SAE) is thereby regarded as a deficit (302).

It should be observed, however, that there are a number of curriculum and supporting documents. These documents include support for speaking as well as writing and reading. In schools in the Australian state of Queensland, curriculum and other supporting documents available to teachers include The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia (NLLIA) ESL Bandscales Version 2 (McKay et al. 2007), The Bandscales for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Learners (Education Queensland 2000), The EAL/D Bandscales for State Schools in Queensland (Education Queensland 2008) as well as the nationally available EAL/D Learning Progressions (ACARA 2015). These documents, while not intended as teaching guides or strategies, describe the development of an EAL/D student’s language progression over years, stages or phases, and in doing so, explain the types of language practices expected. These language practices seem to focus on Standard Australian English with few explicit references to the advantages of students’ multilingualism throughout their development, except for the Bandscales for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Learners which have some examples in the documents where the use of home language (HL) or L1 for speaking is supported. The extent to which teachers use these documents to support multilingualism in the classroom, however, varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. Frequently, the degree to which support of multilingualism is possible is dependent on factors that are beyond the control of the classroom teacher such as the availability of support and specialist staff, time and funding allocation, teacher knowledge and use of students’ other languages. However, it bears noting that the aforementioned documents themselves present language development as unidirectional, linear, cumulative and sequential and in pursuit of mastery which Canagarajah and Wurr (2011) describe as inconsistent with multilingual practices involving fluid and antiteleological processes enacted in everyday practice. Additional assistance which supports EAL/D students’ language practices in terms of multilingualism is found in the form of teacher assistants and bilingual support officers although this is also dependent on funding.

Teaching and learning strategies

Beyond official documentation for supporting EAL/D students in mainstream classrooms, there is a growing body of literature that unpacks strategies for doing so in relation to teaching and learning. Strategies promoting the use of students’ multilingualism and language practices in education have increasingly been recognised in the broader literature. Several studies have explored the ways in which teaching and learning could respond to students’ diverse language practices via multilingual pedagogies to supporting decolonising approaches; these include translanguaging (French and Armitage 2020; Garcia and Wei 2013; Heugh, Li, and Song 2017), transemioticising (Lin 2019), translingualism (Canagarajah 2013) and mundane metrolingualism (Pennycook and Otsuji 2019) among others. Collectively, these approaches share commonalities in terms of creating safe spaces for students to draw on their entire linguistic repertoires and be afforded agency to direct their own learning. A focus on shifting the ‘monolingual mindset’ of teachers is also highlighted in studies drawing on these approaches (French and Armitage 2020). In the Australian context, studies have also noted the importance of teacher-initiated support for students’ home language literacy practices as well as the active involvement of bilingual or multilingual teaching assistance and Google translate (Hajek and Slaughter 2014; Turner, Keary, and Tour 2022). Despite the increase in awareness and variety of multilingual pedagogies supporting the decolonising of language practices for EAL/D students, research finds that EAL/D learners’ multilingualism is rarely used or valued in teaching and learning contexts in Australia (Lundy, McEvoy, and Byrne 2011). Moreover, few studies explore EAL/D speaking specifically in Australian education as a site for multilingual practices. Based on this prior research, this study recognises that despite the rich literature available on multilingual practices such as translanguaging, obstacles remain that prevent teachers from embracing them. Our goal is to explore the extent to which teachers are aware of and implement relevant practices through their praxis as they reach out to multilingual students.

Our study

This research aimed to explore the ways in which EAL/D students’ multilingual practices are visibilised in Australian schools and classrooms. In light of our aims, we employed qualitative research using focus groups as a method that afforded participants the chance to ‘expose marginalising effects of knowledge/power, to disarticulate and rearticulate both local and institutional practices, and to imagine and enact new and different potentialities for being’ in conversation with one another (Kamberelis, Dimitriadis, and Welker 2018, 696). Permission was granted from school leaders and classroom teachers in rural Queensland to participate in up to one-hour long, semi-structured focus group interviews. The participants all worked in settings with high numbers of EAL/D students. In total, four focus groups and sixteen participants were interviewed in late 2022. Participants were asked to discuss the ways in which they actively sought to visibilise their EAL/D students’ multilingual resources, if/how any policy guided this, and the difficulties in doing so. Each focus group interview was transcribed before analysis began. The teachers we spoke with worked in religious schools and could all be described as experienced/early career teachers. Pseudonyms were given to all teachers to maintain their anonymity given the small and tight-knit communities in which they work. Working roles ranged from class teacher to specialist teacher to curriculum leader. In terms of experience working with EAL/D students, the teachers in this study ranged from highly experienced to brand new. A number had also attended training pertaining to the use of the Queensland Bandscales specifically and 2 are formally qualified as EAL/D specialists whereas 14 others were teachers and school administrators who oversaw the implementation of such documents across multiple classes. The teachers reported varying degrees of preparation to work with EAL/D students. For instance, some recounted being ‘given a rushed handover from a previous EAL/D support teacher who was leaving town on how to use them (Bandscales). There was no official training’ while the general consensus of others reiterated that they had picked up skills along the way from ‘working with students from another country’ without any training until recently.

Our analysis of the focus group conversation is guided by reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2019) following key themes from the nascent decolonial language theorising on binaries including: monolingual/bi-/multi-lingualism, professional/personal, knowing/unknowing, and formal/informal. Our analysis was not necessarily inductive or deductive and was instead influenced by the notion of centring the subjectivity of the researchers and recursively coding through deep engagement with the data (Braun and Clarke 2019, 593). We thus focused on generating themes with the understanding that themes are not ‘“in” the data, pre-existing analysis, awaiting retrieval’ but were notable due to ‘patterns of shared meaning’ we noticed in light of our decolonial theoretical framing as our unifying idea (Braun and Clarke 2019, 593). Our reflexive thematic analysis entailed multiple, deep discussions and (re)thinking about the interviews with teachers to generate collaboratively imagined themes that spoke to our research question. In this spirit, we engaged in a fluid and recursive thematic analysis that engaged with theory, one another and our own subjectivities regarding EAL/D students’ and multilingualism in Australian classrooms. Notably, our inclusion of our personal stories below and connections to the research further work to highlight our assumptions and stances as part of our reflexive thematic analysis.

Natalie: I grew up in Singapore, which has four official languages despite being one of the world’s geographically smallest nations. Code switching and mixing was a part of our everyday life and Singlish (a portmanteau of Singapore and English)² was the language of the streets. Speaking ‘proper’ English in informal settings would see me labelled kentang (a potato-eater), insinuating that I was trying to sound like a Westerner (namely British or American) while simultaneously being seen as a marker of educational attainment and the key to upward social mobility. When I later became a teacher of English and drama, I had to keep my classrooms a ‘Singlish-free zone’, ensuring that my students (re)produced grammatically correct English in their writing and speaking to ensure their success in the Cambridge examinations, helping to secure favourable post-secondary educational pathways. Outside the classroom, however, we often drew on our multilingual resources as a way of connecting to one another and our unique Singaporean identity.

Danielle: As a third generation German in Australia, I only had the opportunity to learn my heritage language as an adult at university. My grandfather arrived in Australia in the 1950s post-WWII amidst a strong anti-German, pro-assimilationist agenda which meant he never spoke German with my mother or me. After my German grandfather’s death, my mother reconnected my sister and me with our living family in Germany, whom we visited and then travelled together to Spain. It was on this trip that our multiple languages (German, Castilian Spanish, Valencian, English) were used in strange, imperfect, and comical ways to communicate without the fear of being shamed for doing so. However, years later when I began teaching languages in Australian schools, I could not help but notice the exact opposite of these flexible language practices being encouraged, and often to the detriment of me, my students and language learning itself.

Gail: I grew up never questioning my English-speaking heritage, but fully aware that the dominant discourse politically was driven by another language I learnt at school. I knew that I was a ‘rooinek’³ living outside the dominant linguistic discourse, yet paradoxically still within the dominant racial discourse of my childhood and early adult years, Thus, when I moved to Australia, I was unprepared for those who were totally excluded from the mainstream language discourses yet seemed to be part of the world politically. This came to a head when I was confronted by my own inherent colonial language practices while facilitating a professional learning workshop for school educators that included participants from different language backgrounds, including several Australian First Nations educators. A participant shared how ashamed she felt whenever she spoke her home language. This sense of shame impacted my teaching then and henceforth. I realised that I needed to question my own motivations and inherent biases for teaching SAE. Was I unintentionally guilty of dehumanising workshop participants? Was I unintentionally guilty of Eurocentric language practices?

Brittany: Similar to Gail, I had also never questioned my English-speaking heritage growing up. However, learning a second language (Japanese) from primary school to the end of my secondary schooling allowed me to develop a greater awareness and understanding of the many challenges that students can face when learning a completely new language. I have been able to bring this personal experience with me as an educator and formed part of the motivation for my PhD and continued research around supporting students with English as an additional language or dialect. Recognising that a lot of formal and informal learning, as well as social interactions, occurs through speaking and listening, this is a particular focus of mine, especially how the development on these skills can be supported through more creative pedagogical practices.

Blurring the binaries

In this section, we introduce examples of how teachers included EAL/D students’ multilingual repertoires in their classrooms and consider how these examples might disrupt the coloniality of languaging and its binaries of monolingual/bi-/multi-lingualism, professional/personal, knowing/unknowing before acknowledging the practical barriers limiting teachers’ capacity to further support their students’ multilingual language practices.

Monolingual/bi-/multi-lingual

When asked about how they encourage home language use in the classroom, a number of teachers noted the ways in which they explicitly drew on their EAL/D students’ linguistic repertoires to challenge the colonial notion of monolingualism as the norm (Clyne 2008). For instance, Santana recognised the value of students’ multilingual practices incorporating their home languages by describing:

We did have a student who would go and write their assignment in Spanish, and then translate it back into English. So, she’s doing twice the work of everybody else, you know? But it’s having that understanding that they might need to do it in their home language, you know, doing their code-switching all the time.

Other teachers, such as Nyra, noted the opportunities they provided for students to translate for their peers when questioned about how they included students’ home languages in the classroom. In describing a scenario in which her students engage in translation, Nyra recounted ‘I actually had a student describe in their own language to their peer, because the [other] student wasn’t understanding. So, I asked her friend next to her, and I said, “Do you think you can tell her in her language?” And she did, and the other student understood then’.

In response to questions about how home languages were included in the classroom, Nyra, Helena, and Santana also reported asking students how to say common greetings in their home languages and instances of teachers learning the students’ home languages, so that they could further ‘encourage children to use their home language’ in the classroom. In some cases, teachers also shared that they encouraged students to make use of Google Translate and translator applications as well. Through enabling language practices such as translating with friends and technology, teachers can rupture the binary between strict monolingualism in educational contexts by validating students’ flexible multilingualism and use of transemiotic strategies. These efforts, albeit through small changes, nonetheless challenge the coloniality of languaging by encouraging not only multiple languages but multiple semiotic resources and modes (Heinrichs 2022).

Professional/personal

Another strategy for supporting EAL/D students’ multilingualism reported by teachers in this study concerns the blurring of the boundary between personal and professional settings and languaging practices through the fostering of relationships with students’ families as sources and sites of linguistic and cultural knowledge. Continuing to respond to the question of how teachers’ included students’ home language in teaching and learning, Marcia mentioned that nurtures relationships with families through her EAL/D students interpreting ‘complex ideas with their parents in their home language’ in order to ensure mutual understanding. Marcia explained:

I have no problems with them speaking in home language. I can see they’re clarifying with the adults, in interviews with me. They bring their parents in and they interpretate, clarifying for their parents. Thank goodness they’re there because otherwise their parents are giving consent to something that they don’t understand, so they explore the complex ideas with their parents in their home language.

In a similar spirit, Santana described the importance of inviting parents into schools to share language, culture, home life and food as a way to embrace students’ multilingualism and home languages. Santana recounts:

Some of our schools have embraced that [home languages] by including the families, so parents and relatives. In cultural days and things at the schools where they shared a little bit of language in terms of home life and you know, foods and special cultural things and that as well. So that valuing of, you know, the students home language has increased, I think.

In doing so, Marcia and Santana bring students’ personal language practices, normally enacted with family outside of school, into the school context; this ruptures the coloniality of languaging by countering the idea of SAE as the only professional/academic/official language used in school contexts as the common language spoken by Australians, and questions why SAE is the ‘only means of communication advocated in schools’ (Hogarth 2019, 11).

In a similar example, Sirinya explained how:

we used to do generally as teachers, particularly if they came in and couldn’t speak any English – we always try to buddy them up with a student who spoke that language. We actually even had to move one student to a different class one year because there was nobody else and this student couldn’t speak a single word [of English]. It didn’t’ take long – probably a term – and he had, at least, conversational English. … I’ve had a lot of success with that [buddying students up] and they’re more comfortable listening to that student or their buddy repeat the instruction or the words and not feeling threatened or embarrassed or ashamed to ask the teacher again.

Her example shows how teachers can suspend their own need to build rapport with EAL/D students which teachers often regard as the foundation for effective teaching and learning. Instead, she offers the possibility for a buddy system which decentres the teacher and recentres the personal relationships between students built on shared linguistic resources. We note that the idea of a buddy system is not necessarily new regarding working with EAL/D students. However, we argue that recognising the ways in which this strategy might work to foster personal relationships beyond the teacher (at least to begin with) can work towards an abandoning of the notion that as professionals all teachers must build rapport solely between themselves and students and instead makes space for supportive relationships between students. In its place we see a turn towards an educative experienced premised on the personal and linguistic bonds between students; this disrupts the unfeeling professionalism inherent in teaching to make space for the affective and relational phenomena inherent in the personal connections of multilingual encounters in line with decolonial thought (Escobar 2018; Perry 2021).

Knowing/unknowing

Teachers also shared their experiences of suspending the need to always understand their students by enforcing institutionalised monolingualism through requiring them to use SAE. Instead, the teachers highlighted how fostered safe spaces in which EAL/D students could bring their multilingual repertoires to the classroom and, in doing so, disrupt the colonial demand for knowledge that operating in SAE imposes. In response to a question about how she felt about EAL/D students being given the opportunity to use their languages at school, Portia reflected:

I’m quite comfortable with them because they tag along behind me as we’re walking to the learning hub and they’re just chatting away to each other and whatnot, so they could be saying anything about me behind my back, but I’m just happy for them to do it, and they’re really quite they’re a lot more relaxed in doing the activities with me now.

In fact, Portia jovially added:

Who knows what they talk about? They talk about the activity, or they might be describing what I look like or how they feel about me wouldn’t have a clue, but it does give them that opportunity to be able to use their own language rather than to have to sit there all day trying to, you know, listen to this foreign language, and try and pick up a few words. So, it just gives them a time to relax as well.

Her remarks highlight the potential for teachers to relinquish the luxury of understanding that SAE affords them in order to make space for EAL/D students’ multilingualism, and in doing so, blur the boundary between knowing and unknowing by situating the typically ‘knowing’ teacher as unknowing in order to foster learning for their EAL/D students. As such, we see a rupturing to the coloniality of languaging whereby knowing and understanding are demanded for the purpose of control and hegemony (Vázquez 2011).

Contrastingly, Nyra told of a strategy she used with her EAL/D students whereby she flipped the classroom to position herself as the language learner. Nyra detailed, ‘I got them to stand up and I said, ‘Look, I don’t understand your language, and you are going to teach me something, like a basic sentence, like “My name is … in your language”. And they each got up, and I said, “You are not allowed to speak English, just your language”. It was so funny, absolutely hilarious … It was fantastic, I just wanted them to see that I could be in their position … to see how they can teach someone a language – and they loved it’. What strikes us here is that the purpose of Nyra’s activity was to unknown, and to be in the unknown rather than to completely understand her students’ languages. Although there are clear benefits to teachers learning their students’ languages, Nyra has instead enacted a decolonising language practice of sitting in the unknowing and has done so visibly with her students. We contend that doing so further obscures the difference between knowing and unknowing by emphasising the importance of knowing the sense of unknowing so familiar to EAL/D students and other language learners; moreover, we consider this sense of unknowing on behalf of the teacher a key language practice in decolonising education for EAL/D students.

Darker side

The teachers we spoke with highlighted a number of ways in which they invited, encouraged, and invoked their EAL/D students’ multilingual language practice in their classrooms. At the same time, however, the teachers also noted multiple challenges to further enhancing multilingualism in their classrooms to the benefit of their EAL/D students. Romy, Lynlee and Santana all noted the need for professional learning in strategies to support EAL/D students’ multilingualism, especially for early career teachers. At the same time, Sirinya and Helena pointed out the utility of particular documents including the Queensland Bandscales for drawing teachers’ attention to how their EAL/D students might use language, including their multilingual practices. Issues with a lack of time and funding to engage in professional learning and planning for supporting multilingualism were also noted by several teachers in our study. Santana also observed that it is difficult to foster multilingualism within programmes that have a specific focus on ‘improving English skills’. Others pointed out that many schools had limited, or no, specialist staff with training in EAL/D pedagogies and some schools that ‘don’t allow home language to be spoken or encourage it, but they just don’t know what to do because they haven’t had the appropriate training’. Lynlee also lamented the paucity of attention placed on speaking as reading and writing traditionally take precedence.

Implications and conclusion

Here we have unpacked teachers’ strategies for supporting their EAL/D students language practices through our own multicultural/lingual lenses and in light of decolonial thought. This has highlighted a number of ways in which the binaries that separate ‘valid’ school-based language practices from students’ lived experiences can, and are, being challenged in educational contexts in Australia. Students’ multilingualism is encouraged by teachers through explicit multilingual interactions, buddy systems, familiar connects and a suspension of the need to ‘know’ in favour of sitting with the discomfort of unknowing. Yet teachers noted several difficulties in their capacity individually and as a profession to see such practices continue and flourish in Australian school. Hence, our findings suggest that targeted professional learning is needed that draws on key support documents (e.g. Bandscales) that explicitly includes mention of how multilingual pedagogies, such as translanguaging, could be incorporated into teaching. However, key support documents can be borne out of policy, therefore, it is important to recognise the challenging and contested nature of the policy environment and how educators are encouraged to go beyond key support documents to help provide any kind of remedy. Online language learning modules may also offer further opportunities for teachers to engage in the sense of ‘unknowing’ felt by their EAL/D students whilst also offering them a chance to learn the language/s used by their students. Although our research here has focused on teachers’ accounts of how they support EAL/D students’ multilingualism, further research from students’ perspectives alongside observational studies would provide deeper insights into how this plays out in practice.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danielle H. Heinrichs

Danielle H. Heinrichs is a Lecturer in multilingualism and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research draws on decolonial theories to explore the everyday language practices of multilinguals in education and health settings. She is trained as a teacher of EAL/D, German and Spanish.

Gail Hager

Gail Hager works as a sessional academic in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University. Her research interests lie in literacy and EAL/D learners with a focus on the application of Practice Theory. Dr Hager is a trained English, Literacy and EAL/D teacher, and she has worked in this field across a variety of industries for 40 years.

Brittany A. McCormack

Brittany McCormack is a Lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of music education, diversity and inclusion, and mental health and wellbeing.

Natalie Lazaroo

Natalie Lazaroo is a Lecturer in Drama and English education, whose research interests centre on arts-based methodologies, relational and decolonisng methodologies, and citizenship. Natalie was a secondary school teacher in Singapore, where she received teaching awards for the use of drama-based pedagogies in the curriculum.

Notes

1. ‘When referring to deaf people who belong to a linguistic and cultural minority known as the Deaf community, the “D” may be capitalised in reference to the individual, the group, or the culture in order to accord respect and deference, for example, the Deaf community. This is similar to referring to French people, members of the Macedonian community or Indonesian culture. When referring simply to audiological status or when cultural affiliation is not known, as in the case of a person with a hearing loss in general, the lower case “D”, as in “deaf”, is the more common usage’ (ACARA 2016, 5).

2. Singlish, referred to in some publications as an English creole (e.g. Hsieh et al. 2022), is a multilingual hybrid that draws on vocabulary and grammatical structures from English, Chinese (non-specific), Malay, and Tamil.

3. rooinek – fairly derogatory term given to White English-speaking citizens who, while accepted as part of the dominant racial group in the country because of colour, nevertheless were not part of the dominant ‘other’ language group that dominated the political world at the time.