Decolonizing research findings in multilingual education: using multilingual (re)sources to develop a database for international research

ABSTRACT

Based on our impression of a tremendous increase in research in L1-based multilingual education (MLE) worldwide in recent years, our small team of multilingual, multicultural researchers began a stocktaking project in 2017. Our aim was to create an open-access, searchable database of annotated references to research on policy and practice in the field. We initiated a large-scale systematic review of academic literature from 2007 to 2020. Recognizing that a ‘state of the field’ literature search could not be done using English alone, we conducted parallel literature searches in Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and French. This methodological paper describes the intentional and reflexive process of researching multilingually: identifying search terms, finding and utilizing appropriate search engines, collecting references, categorizing and annotating publications, and beginning to make use of search functions. We argue there is little guidance on how to research multilingually and note problematic ‘blind spots’ if multilingual education research is biased towards English-speaking contexts or publications written by English-speaking scholars of the Global North. We share what we have learned about engaging in a multilingual systematic literature review, and hope to facilitate the decolonization of academic work and open access to both empirical and theoretical values from a range of perspectives.

KEYWORDS:

• L1-based multilingual education
• systematic review
• multilingual methodology
• multilingual database
• multilingual research

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We would like to thank Talia Gonzalez, Jazz Digao, Obi Eneh, Baolier Huang, Francis Gonzales, Erina Iwasaki, Pia Maiti, Zhaoxin Su and Bingqing Wu at Teachers College for their coordination of the language teams, along with Hovsep Sarafyan and Joseph Schwartz at Pepperdine University and the many volunteers from Benson’s courses and even other universities for annotating entries in one or more languages.

2 The database is currently in the process of being publicly shared. Please email any of the authors if you wish to consult it prior to its release.

3 https://www.zotero.org/

4 https://ifef.francophonie.org/node/227

5 https://www.mendeley.com/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin M. Wong

Dr. Kevin M. Wong is an Assistant Professor and Chair of TESOL at Pepperdine University in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology. His research examines multilingual education for teachers and children from preschool to university contexts with the goal of providing multilingual communities with linguistically and culturally sustaining, equitable, and humanizing learning environments.

Erina Iwasaki

Dr. Erina Iwasaki is a lecturer specialized in Languages, Communities, and Schools, in the International and Comparative Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research examines the efforts of ethnolinguistically non-dominant communities to advocate and implement education in their own languages combining narrative and policy studies.

Carol Benson

Carol Benson is a specialist in L1-based multilingual education who has worked in multilingual countries worldwide. Formerly an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, she continues to pursue scholarly interests in language-in-education policy change, assessing literacy in non-dominant languages, and creating a multilingual habitus in educational development.

Dak Lhagyal

Dr. Dak Lhagyal is a lecturer at College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of multilingual education and the experiences of ethnolinguistic minority students in state education in terms of their educational and occupational opportunities.