Translanguaging for Doing Gender in English-Medium Classrooms in Hong Kong: Towards Critical CLIL in Plurilingual Settings

ABSTRACT

Critical content and language-integrated learning (CLIL) has been advocated to attest raciolingusitic ideologies in plurilingual educational settings. However, little is known about how to help students in contesting inequalities about other structures of domination in bilingual education programs. This study aims to address this gap by examining the construction of gender identities in Secondary 4 (Grade 11) English-medium Liberal Studies lessons, which aimed to enhance awareness of gender equality and subject-specific English skills about the topic. The study shows that gender was constructed and reconstructed by conflicting multilingual and multimodal gendered discourses, including the formal curriculum, school lesson materials, and classroom interaction. The paper reveals that teachers and students jointly constructed masculinities of “real men,” “good men” and “gay men” in CLIL classrooms imbedded in curriculum contexts infused with gender dualism and alternative gender values began to emerge after the CLIL lessons. The results suggest that CLIL teachers can facilitate development of critical literacies about gender by enabling encounters of different voices in translanguaging and trans-registering spaces created by students’ familiar L1 everyday discourses and multimodal practices. Pedagogical implications were also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical content and language integrated learning
• gendered discourses
• trans-registering
• translanguaging

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the General Research Funds, Hong Kong Research Grants Council [18611521].

Notes on contributors

Yiqi Liu

Yiqi Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language Education, The Education University of Hong Kong and Honorary Assistant Professor in Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative at The University of Hong Kong. Her main research interests include discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, critical cultural studies and bilingual education. Yiqi’s recent publications have appeared in major international journals such as Discourse and Communication, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.