Translanguaging: a pedagogy of heteroglossic hope

ABSTRACT

Translanguaging research has documented language practices within the multilingual, multimodal turn and the post-multilingualism era. Space still remains for inquiry into translanguaging practices that respect and align with students’ multilingual affordances across languages. How might these practices counteract monoglossic pressures in classrooms and their appearance in/through teacher-student dynamics? Growing attention given to bi/multilingual students includes a call to develop meaningful, heterogeneous contexts of learning that sustain their cultural and linguistic repertoires. As a pedagogy of hope, translanguaging counteracts monoglossic bias by (a) enhancing students’ cognition and language learning, (b) creating entry points for all into learning communities, and (c) enacting more just, equitable, and humanizing instructional practices in multilingual classrooms. This special issue features five carefully curated articles that together showcase how translanguaging offers hope for shifting monoglossic perspectives and practices across teachers and students, ages and contexts, and through multimodal means. Several new and meaningful contributions emerge from these articles to inform the current translanguaging knowledge base. These include insight into translanguaging practice within minoritized languaging spaces, the uncertainties and tensions of translanguaging pedagogy, translanguaging as a vehicle for teacher self-reflection and criticality, multimodality as an entry point into translanguaging, and longitudinal examinations of translanguaging practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• pedagogy
• heteroglossic
• bilingual
• monolingual
• bilingual education
• advantages of bilingualism
• multilingualism

Since Cen Williams’ (1994) first coining of the concept of translanguaging to refer to integrating rather than separating two languages during instruction, translanguaging research has burgeoned from initial efforts to study and theorize the language practices of bi/multilinguals (e.g. Baker 2001; Creese and Blackledge 2018; García 2009; Hornberger and Link 2012; Lewis, Jones, and Baker 2012; Sayer 2013). Translanguaging-informed scholarship has endeavored to shift the monolingual bias deeply rooted in language education and advocate for linguistic justice for bi/multilinguals (e.g. Paulsrud, Tian, and Toth 2021; Sánchez and García 2021; Tian et al. 2020). In doing so, translanguaging has helped reconceptualize language as fluid in development, highlighting its value in use and context (rather than in prescriptive makeup) and the legitimacy of languaging for all, regardless of idealized monolingual language norms. Some scholars have marked these new understandings and conceptualizations of language as entering into the post-multilingualism era (Wei 2016, 2018), where ideological borders across and between languages have been blurred and where complex interweaving of language and language varieties has become more communally recognized and welcomed. Furthermore, the latest conceptualizations of translanguaging also acknowledge multisensory and multimodal forms of communication that are concurrently employed to make meaning, moving beyond strictly a focus on verbal or written forms of language (e.g. Lau, Tian, and Lin 2021; Lemke and Lin 2022; Lin 2019; Wu and Lin 2019). To date much has been written about translanguaging in an effort to document and explore the languaging processes and practices that embody the multilingual, multimodal turn and the post-multilingualism era (e.g. Bengochea, Sembiante, and Gort 2018; Hawkins 2021; Juvonen and Källkvist 2021; Wei and García 2022; Mora, Tian, and Harman 2022; Tian 2022).

In this new era, where theoretical insights have inspired the questioning and revising of instruction and pedagogy, there still remains space for inquiry into translanguaging practices that respect and align with students’ multilingual affordances across languages and language varieties. How might these practices counteract monoglossic pressures in classrooms and their appearance in/through teacher-student dynamics? Growing attention given to bi/multilingual students includes a call to develop meaningful, heterogeneous contexts of learning that incorporate and sustain their cultural and linguistic repertoires (Paris 2012). As a pedagogy of hope, translanguaging counteracts monoglossic bias by (a) enhancing students’ cognition and language learning, (b) creating entry points for all into learning communities, and (c) enacting more just, equitable, and humanizing instructional practices in multilingual classrooms.

This special issue features five carefully curated articles that together showcase how translanguaging offers hope for shifting monoglossic perspectives and practices across teachers and students, ages and contexts, and through multimodal means. Several new and meaningful contributions emerge from these articles to inform the current translanguaging knowledge base. These include insight into translanguaging practice within minoritized languaging spaces (e.g. Tian and Lau 2022; Sembiante et al. 2023), the uncertainties and tensions of translanguaging pedagogy (e.g. Prada 2021; Tian and Lau 2022), translanguaging as a vehicle for teacher self-reflection and criticality (e.g. Prada 2021; Tian and Lau 2022; Ponzio and Deroo 2021), multimodality as an entry point into translanguaging (e.g. Ponzio and Deroo 2021), and longitudinal examinations of translanguaging practice (e.g. Kirsch and Mortini 2021; Tian and Lau 2022).

A pedagogy of hope for enhancing cognition and language learning

Across students and teachers of different ages, contexts, and language backgrounds in the featured studies of this special issue, translanguaging provided spaces for enhancing their understanding and creative learning. In Kirsch and Mortini’s (2021, this issue) study, emergent bilingual preschool children transformed teachers’ formulaic language phrases and expressions by integrating features of their home languages and using these to communicate with peers and participate across routine activities. Across the year of investigation, these children's inherent translanguaging practices in this language-welcoming context helped them to participate and learn in the majority language classroom. Sembiante et al.’s (2023, this issue) separate analysis of teachers’ translanguaging practices in a dual language bilingual education preschool context showcases how teachers were responsive in shifting their instructional language to support emergent bilingual preschoolers’ attempts to make meaning of their artifacts in show-and-tell. Not only for the benefit of students, but translanguaging theory and pedagogy has helped teachers to expand their instructional knowledge and practice of/for multilingual learners. By extending the inclusive aspect of translanguaging theory to incorporate multimodal representations, Ponzio and Deroo (2021, this issue) were able to help self-identified monolingual pre- and in-service teachers better understand and connect with the affordances of translanguaging theory and pedagogy. Similarly, in his work with pre-service Spanish teachers, Prada (2021, this issue) highlights how translanguaging theory and its real-life applications enabled one teacher to problematize his own deficit views of Spanglish and shift to becoming more welcoming of flexible multilingual practices. In the studies featured in this special issue, translanguaging served as a pedagogy of hope for supporting learning, participation, and deeper connections and understanding of language and linguistically diverse languaging.

A pedagogy of hope for creating access through flexible languaging

We frame translanguaging as a pedagogy of hope not only because it bolsters cognition and learning but also because it democratizes the learning space, allowing access and opportunity for linguistically diverse language learners to engage and participate in education. In majority language educational spaces, where the language of the program and of instruction may not match that of the multilingual children who are being served, the flexibility of the teachers to incorporate translanguaging spaces can make the difference between students’ inclusion and participation (e.g. Kirsch and Mortini 2021, this issue; Sembiante et al. 2023, this issue). In both early childhood-focused studies in this issue, it is the teachers’ flexibility in creating a multilingual space that provides children with the footing to engage and interact in the curricular structures and language routines. Multimodal extensions to translanguaging theory (i.e. Lin’s [2016] Multimodalities-Entextualization Cycle) also helped increase monolingual teachers’ access to understanding translanguaging and recognition of its affordances for themselves as teachers and for their multilingual learners (Ponzio and Deroo 2021, this issue). Tian and Lau’s (2022, this issue) study showcased how navigating the challenges of implementing translanguaging pedagogy in a minoritized language classroom helped engender moments where both the teacher and researcher could reflect on their own language identities and ideologies. The opportunity to work through these tensions together allowed both parties to gain access to more meaningful, contextualized bilingual teaching and learning experiences.

A pedagogy of hope for enacting just, equitable, and humanizing instructional practices

Although translanguaging theory and practice is often studied in connection to multilingual educational contexts or learners, its tenets remain relevant and empowering for all teachers and learners because they engage in a range of language practices that span across a continuum of diversity (e.g. languages, registers, dialects, idiolects). The articles curated for this special issue are a representation of the unifying force of translanguaging and its relevance for teachers and learners from a range of backgrounds and across different educational contexts. That is, translanguaging theory and pedagogy has the potential to humanize the instructional practices of teachers across years of experience, grade level, and educational context. Whereas the pre-service teachers in an ESL program in Ponzio and Deroo (2021, this issue) learned to decenter school-aligned codes and recognize students’ holistic language repertoires, the focal pre-service Spanish teacher in Prada's study replaced pejorative connotations of socially-stigmatized Spanish registers with a more open and humanizing orientation that acknowledged their value and legitimacy. Tian and Lau explored the humanizing relationships developed by the teacher and researcher in a dual language bilingual context who navigated their fears and concerns in search of shared understandings around equitable instruction practices for their students throughout a year. For these teachers (and researchers), translanguaging held a resocializing force that worked to increase the humanizing and equity-building potential of their practices and perspectives towards multilingual learners.

The articles in this special issue provide insight into translanguaging as a pedagogy of hope for a plethora of educational contexts and circumstances: within minoritized languaging spaces (e.g. Tian and Lau 2022; Sembiante et al. 2023), during the uncertainties of applying translanguaging pedagogy (e.g. Prada 2021; Tian and Lau 2022), in seeking self-reflection and instructional criticality (e.g. Prada 2021; Tian and Lau 2022; Ponzio and Deroo 2021), in developing kinship with multilingual learners (e.g. Ponzio and Deroo 2021), and across longitudinal examinations of translanguaging practice (e.g. Kirsch and Mortini 2021; Tian and Lau 2022).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabrina F. Sembiante

Dr. Sabrina F. Sembiante is an associate professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education at Florida Atlantic University and received her doctoral degree from the University of Miami in Teaching and Learning with a specialization in Language and Literacy Learning in Multilingual Settings. Her research explores pedagogical supports for emergent-to-advanced bilingual students' developing bilingualism, biliteracy, and academic languaging in school contexts.

Zhongfeng Tian

Dr. Zhongfeng Tian is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers University–Newark. He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Language, Literacy, and Culture from Boston College and a M.Ed. in TESOL from Boston University. His research examines different ways that teachers can make their classrooms more heterogeneous, humane, and inclusive for multilingual learners in ESL and dual language bilingual education (DLBE) contexts, and how to prepare culturally and linguistically competent teachers with social justice praxis.