The Language Journey of Korean-English Bilingual Children

This month we published Korean-English Bilingualism in Early Childhood by Sunny K. Park-Johnson. In this post the author explains the importance of the longitudinal nature of the study.

When studying bilingual language development in early childhood, we often rely heavily on snapshots: these data come from just a day or two of their lives. Sometimes we see children in labs for a study, and then we never hear from them again. That is why a longitudinal study is so important. Following children’s language development across time gives us a perspective that is both expansive and specific, capturing moments in development that we sometimes miss in snapshots.

This book does just that. We get to see two-and-a-half years’ worth of data, observed monthly, that provides a rich picture of four Korean-English bilingual children’s language journey. The children in this book are acquiring both Korean and English during early childhood, a rich time of language development that has many nuances, small changes, and subtle shifts. And because the data is collected in the child’s home, we’re able to capture naturalistic, spontaneous language “in the wild”.

The longitudinal study is also important because it compares children to themselves over time. We know there is much individual variation between children; by observing children’s development longitudinally, the comparisons are within the child’s own self. This inherent consistency is immensely valuable when studying the picture of children’s language development.

The book takes readers through the development of morphology and syntax of Korean and English separately, then discusses code-switching and interplay between the two languages. Then, as an epilogue of sorts, there is a chapter that reports on an interview with two of the children, who are now young adults. It is a unique experience to hear from the very same participants a decade later as they reflect back on their bilingualism and language journey.

Perhaps most importantly, as a Korean-English bilingual myself, I was welcomed into the lives of these families: not just as a researcher, but as an extended family member. Thus, the book has an insight, context, and weight that goes beyond grammar; it is imbued with the responsibility and care of an insider that understands and loves the community. The value of those relationships cannot be understated.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Multimodal Communication in Young Multilingual Children by Jieun Kiaer.

Uplifting Indigenous Mexican Languages and Identities in Schools

We will soon be publishing Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students by William Perez and Rafael Vásquez.  In this post the authors set the stage for their book and discuss its importance.

Last June, Griselda Zarate, a young Indigenous Mexican-origin student, spoke to Spanish-language television about the racial discrimination she and her sister faced while attending the Santa Rita Union School District in Central California USA. The racism that students like Griselda face often spreads by other Mexicans and manifests by language-shaming for the way Indigenous Mexicans speak. Popular culture ridicules Indigenous languages as dialects, holding unequal power relationships against Spanish and English. As a result of these aggressions, the school district passed a resolution to prohibit the disparaging terms “Oaxaquita/o” and “Indito” which translate to “little Oaxacan” and “little Indian” referring to the widely held belief that Indigenous people from Mexico’s Guerrero and Oaxaca states are racially inferior. The district will also establish the first Indigenous Mixtec after school program so that children can have access to learning their language.

California is considered the state with the largest concentration of Indigenous Mexicans. By one estimate, about 800,000 Oaxacans have settled in Southern California and are mostly Zapotec peoples. These communities come from diverse cultures and often speak at least one of the 68 Indigenous languages of Mexico. Despite their rich social, cultural, and linguistic practices, they face many challenges in healthcare, the labor force, education, and other institutions due to historically lived discrimination.

After decades of living among and working with Indigenous communities in Los Angeles, we decided to conduct a study in Southern California with over 150 Indigenous youth from three groups: Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and P’urhépechas. We wanted to find out what happens to Indigenous students who attend schools but largely go unnoticed, or when noticed, face scrutinization. In our book, Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students, we ask: how do Indigenous students experience school, given the traumas many have faced in Mexico for being labeled Indigenous, for speaking Spanish ‘with an accent’ due to the ‘inhibiting’ Indigenous ‘dialects’ they speak, or for coming from ‘underdeveloped’ communities and where society regards them as intellectually ‘inferior’? And how can schools be responsive and address the need to leverage Indigenous students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds to make meaningful connections to their schooling experiences so they can achieve equitable educational opportunities?

To answer these questions, we looked at students’ multilingualism from the perspective that languages interact with each other and the places they are spoken. Since many Indigenous youth experience language across and in between borders, we introduce a transcultural and translingual approach to illustrate the dynamic and intersectional processes that Indigenous youth engage to construct their identities and linguistic practices in social and educational settings. We emphasize adolescents’ agency in actively negotiating and constructing their identities and the influence of their non-Indigenous Mexican peers and teachers. Despite the verbal abuse youth face, the development of transcultural practices often serves to reinvigorate a sense of who they are and creates strategies to actively debunk anti-Indigenous beliefs. Therefore, the book intends to inform supportive environments that affirm Indigenous identities and languages, foster critical consciousness, and value the transnational experiences of Indigenous Mexican youth.

Studying Indigenous educational experiences and the critical issues these students face is significant to developing innovative approaches in Latinx cultural and linguistic heterogeneity and intra-group ethnic/racial relations. Educational researchers and policymakers will find the book of tremendous value, as it is the first book to our knowledge that examines the academic pathways and identities of Indigenous Mexican students. The findings of this study have the potential to inform local, state, and national policies affecting Indigenous migrant students. Adolescent development scholars will also find the book useful since few studies have been done examining migrant Indigenous youth identity development. We hope that our book contributes to education justice initiatives so that Indigenous students are invisible no more.

Please let us know your thoughts.  We’d like to hear from you.

Rafael Vásquez (rafael.vasquez@cgu.edu) and William Perez (william.perez@lmu.edu)

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Overcoming the Gentrification of Dual Language, Bilingual and Immersion Education edited by M. Garrett Delavan, Juan A. Freire and Kate Menken.

Language Use in a Multilingual Workplace

This month we published Domestic Workers Talk by Kellie Gonçalves and Anne Ambler Schluter. In this post the authors introduce the book and explain what inspired it. 

This study of Shine (a multilingual cleaning company) was inspired by the dearth of sociolinguistic work carried out in domestic labor contexts and blue-collar workplaces more generally. As Kellie had close familial ties to Magda, Shine’s owner, we were able to gain access to all employees (migrant women who speak Portuguese and Spanish) and several of Shine’s Anglophone clients who reside in an upper-class suburb of New York City. As such, we were able to talk to the company owner (Magda), all of her employees and several clients in order to better understand how communication is achieved in a small private business where European Portuguese serves as the company internal language despite the company’s geographical location in the US, where English is the dominant language.

Our study had a strong ethnographic component to it meaning that we were also able to observe how the company hierarchy was structured and how daily business was carried out. As both Kellie and Anne are speakers of English, Portuguese and Spanish (at different levels), we were able to witness first-hand how different languages and different language varieties were valued, mixed, and used among domestic workers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

At the same time, we were also able to observe the diverse, creative linguistic and embodied resources drawn on to facilitate communication among domestic workers and their Anglophone clients. Because Magda, the company owner, is a multilingual speaker, she often facilitated communication between her employees and clients thus serving as the main language broker of the company. This fact coupled with domestic workers’ ability to use both Portuguese and Spanish in Newark, NJ (where many domestic workers reside) diminished most domestic workers’ need and even motivation to learn English while simultaneously allowing Magda to control and micro-manage communication between her employees and clients. English was therefore not a prerequisite for employment at Shine.

Due to Magda’s professional background in finance, as well as her managerial and multilingual skills, we also investigated the complex power relations among her, her migrant female employees as well as her Anglophone clients. While we found Magda’s managerial style to be very direct and authoritative, she also had a very soft side to her with regard to both her employees and clients resulting in little turnover of her staff and a high demand for Shine’s cleaning services.

Overall, the book traces the story of Magda as a migrant domestic worker herself, who left Brazil in the 1970s to work as a live-in nanny for an upper-class Brazilian family in New Jersey up until the establishment of Shine in the mid 1980s. We collected data for this project beginning in 2011 until shortly before the book was published in order to provide readers with an accurate and up to date account of how Shine was created and successfully run until Magda’s retirement in 2019 shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic.

We believe our study adds to the growing body of research on language and domestic work by taking embodied sociolinguistics, posthumanism and emotional intelligence into account while simultaneously maintaining a critical perspective on multilingualism, the feminine gendered nature of domestic work as well as the inherent power relations between majority and minority language speakers, where issues of class, gender and citizenship prevail.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Exploring (Im)mobilities edited by Anna De Fina and Gerardo Mazzaferro.

Negotiating Identities, Language and Migration in Global London

This month we published Negotiating Identities, Language and Migration in Global London edited by Cangbai Wang and Terry Lamb. In this post the editors reveal what readers can expect from the book.

London as a global city has been a ‘contact zone’ of multiple flows of people, cultures and ideas from around the world. While there are numerous studies of individual migrant communities in London and the UK, surprisingly, so far very few have investigated the nexus between mobility, cities and languages in London across different migrant groups. This edited volume is an attempt to address this gap by bringing together contextualised and cutting-edge research on a wide range of London-based migrant communities. It seeks to bridge segregated research into migrant groups, stimulate intellectual dialogues between academic and migrant communities, and lay the groundwork for interdisciplinary and comparative research into migrants in London and beyond.

The publication is the result of the collective efforts of HOMELandS (Hub on Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces), an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Westminster. Located in central London and with many of its members coming from different countries and being migrants themselves, since its launch in 2014, HOMELandS has dedicated itself to promoting theoretically informed, interdisciplinary-oriented and language-based research on migration and diaspora in the global context. As a superdiverse urban space and a ‘migration laboratory’, London has naturally become one of the major sites for HOMELandS research. Instead of treating the city as a static physical container or an abstract geographical location, we see it as an ongoing set of possibilities in which the city’s meanings and potential uses are negotiated and released by the activities of migrants as transnational urban dwellers. We pay particular attention to the creative agency of migrants who endeavour to reconfigure existing discursive categories and power relations and engage with the social and political (re)construction of place and identity. The book in a way defines who we are as a research centre and gives a glimpse of the future and potential of London-based research into migration and diaspora that we are doing and will continue to do.

Another distinctive feature, and contribution, of the book is its interdisciplinary ambition in unpacking the complex relations between migration, cities and languages. We use ‘languaging’ as the central concept to integrate relevant research on migrants in applied linguistics, performativity and critical heritage studies. We define ‘language’ in a broad and metaphorical sense, referring to various kinds of material and immaterial practices that give voices to individuals and communities, enabling them to hear and be heard, and to communicate. Three distinctive ‘language spaces’ are identified and used to structure the book. The first one is ‘metrolingual space’ where people engage creatively with cultural translation to represent identities and values; the second one is ‘performative space’ where people of migrant background resort to various art forms to articulate a sense of being and belonging and to search for empowerment; the third one is ‘heritagisation space’ where the diasporic past is remembered, treasured and transmitted to the public and to the next generation, not only through the medium of words but also the silent ‘talking’ of objects. These three ‘language spaces’ are by no means static and mutually exclusive. Rather, they interact with each other in generating valuable opportunities for identity negotiation and opening up new spaces for the future through the very act of languaging.

This book makes a compelling case for mutual constitutiveness of migrants and cities –the city is not external to the identities and belongings of migrants in the same way as migrants are not external to the fabric and the ethos of the city. Migrants and cities produce and reproduce each other through multiple forms of everyday and ongoing negotiations in the intersection of the global and the local. In addition, we hope the publication of this book could further promote ‘language-based’ or ‘language-sensitive’ research as a tool for data collection and ethnographic fieldwork, which is crucial for generating fresh and in-depth insights into the issues of identities, belonging and inclusion that bear broad implications for the studies of migration and societies in post-Brexit Britain and beyond.

Cangbai Wang

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Exploring (Im)mobilities edited by Anna De Fina and Gerardo Mazzaferro.

How can Transcultural Pedagogies Support Learning in Superdiverse Classrooms?

This month we published Transcultural Pedagogies for Multilingual Classrooms edited by Rahat Zaidi, Umit Boz and Eve Moreau. In this post Eve discusses how critical multilingual and transcultural pedagogies are used to address the superdiversity in classrooms today.

Teaching in superdiverse classrooms might be trumpeted as one of the great educational challenges of our times. How students straddle distinct cultural and linguistic worlds to make meaning of curricular content has never been more intricate and complex. With technological innovations and the rapid emergence of accessible media content, teachers and learners can, in a sheer instant, connect with people and places who are far beyond the local providing them with a scope of the world that is unlike anything that has existed in education before. And yet, in our current social climate, the divisions that are constructed along stiff identity markers are reinforcing beliefs about separateness among people and fueling discriminatory and violent behaviors in schools and beyond. New ways to address interconnectedness amongst students’ complex networks of difference has become imperative.

Transcultural Pedagogies for Multilingual Classrooms: Responding to Changing Realities in Theory and Practice is a timely, cutting-edge collection of research studies from across the globe from some of the top scholars in multilingual and transcultural education. It explores the ways in which transcultural pedagogies can support learning and literacies in critical, creative and socially just ways. By exploring the value of affirming cultural and linguistic fluidity in classroom teaching, the researchers describe hopeful practices that harness the diversities of students as a rich resource for learning and interrelating.

Each chapter provides a different and innovative perspective with respect to reimagining language and literacy pedagogies in conjunction with students’ diverse literacies and resources. Presenting a collection of classroom and community-based research, the book addresses the intersections of plurilingualism, identity and transcultural awareness in various contexts, including schools, universities, as well as local and Indigenous communities. These settings have been deliberately chosen to profile the range of research in the field, showcasing transcultural, plurilingual, translanguaging and community-engaged pedagogies, among others.

Eve Moreau

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Languaging Myths and Realities by Qianqian Zhang-Wu.

How Can We Meet the Language Learning Needs of Refugees?

We will soon be publishing Meeting the Needs of Reunited Refugee Families by Sarah Cox. In this post Sarah introduces her book.

This book explores the gap between policy, practice and academic literature within language learning for refugees. Both policy and academic literature recognise the benefits of multilingual approaches to language learning, however language classes are often based on monolingual pedagogies which centre on the need to use the target language as much as possible.

The book explores the language learning needs of a small group of refugee women and their children who had recently arrived in Scotland through family reunion. The book is based on a 5-month teaching study, using critical participatory action research to develop a multilingual approach, which combined translanguaging principles (where people use all their linguistic resources to learn) with decolonising methodology. The book is set within the context of arrival in the host community which is often a period of disorientation and profound change.

To draw the recommendations for multilingual approaches into teaching practice, rather than teaching and researching solely in English, I became a learner of the participants’ languages (Tigrinya, Tamil, Farsi and Arabic) to explore how teachers and researchers might use a multilingual approach even when they don’t speak the same languages as their learners/research participants. The translanguaging ‘stance’ we adopted meant embracing an openness to other languages and using them as much as possible in the research. In the book I talk about how this approach can be part of ‘linguistic hospitality’ which complements the principle of two-way, mutual integration laid out in Scotland’s New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy.

The book centres on three key findings:

1. The first is that decolonial, collaborative learner/teacher relationships bring particular benefits in terms of empowerment and confidence-building for refugee women during the initial stages of refugee arrival. These relationships were enhanced by the shift of power created by the teacher participating as a learner and by researching and teaching multilingually.
2. The second is the importance of the physical environment and the connections people have with their new physical surroundings as they develop a sense of belonging. In the book I draw on ecological approaches to language education and human geography to illustrate language learning as orientation to a new physical environment in a human and embodied way.
3. Thirdly I explore the ‘languaging’ within ‘translanguaging’ as a two-way dialogical process which valorises the full linguistic repertoire and encourages learners and teachers to draw on all their linguistic resources to learn. I consider ways that learners’ home languages can be harnessed in the classroom and detail our experiences of using translanguaging pedagogy. We found multilingual strategies brought particular benefits at the very beginning of learning English so soon after arrival.

The book illustrates how policy, practice and theory might be brought closer together as part of a decolonial approach to language teaching that shifts the balance of power in the classroom, repositions the roles of teacher / researcher and learner / participant and addresses inequality between languages by reducing the dominance of English. The themes of mutual integration and language learning as solidarity are at the heart of the book.

I hope the book will be relevant for anyone interested in ESOL, refugee integration, language teaching, language policy or researching multilingually.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Decolonising Multilingualism by Alison Phipps.

Supporting Increasingly Diverse Student Populations in Schools

We recently published Centering Multilingual Learners and Countering Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education by Jeff Bale, Shakina Rajendram, Katie Brubacher, Mama Adobea Nii Owoo, Jennifer Burton, Wales Wong, Yiran Zhang, Elizabeth Jean Larson, Antoinette Gagné and Julie Kerekes. In this post Jeff explains how the book contributes to the field of teacher education and multilingualism. 

“I feel like you’re judging…I don’t know if judging is the right word, but you’re marking somebody on the way they speak. Then, if you hear another person in a different situation, who’s not an English language learner, you might find the same things…[but] then they’re not marked or judged differently…It feels like you have to jump like an extra hoop, like through an extra hoop, you know, constantly.”

Luciana, a multilingual future teacher of math for Grades 4-10, expressed these concerns about assessing English learners in an interview with our research team. Luciana was referring to the English-language assessment tool used in Ontario, and the activities she had been asked to complete with this tool in a required seminar called “Supporting English Language Learners” in the teacher-education program at OISE, University of Toronto. Throughout the conversation, Luciana reflected on her own experiences of constantly having to prove her proficiency in English (as a student in Mexico, where she grew up; to attend university; to get permanent residency in Canada). These experiences led Luciana to question the purpose of assessing English learners, whether it had anything to do with actual language practices, or if the goal were rather to mark certain learners, to make them “jump through an extra hoop, you know, constantly.”

Luciana’s concerns provide powerful examples of what Daniels and Varghese (2019) theorized as white institutional listening, namely how teacher-education programs normalize the raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017) about Whiteness and standardized English that dominate in Canadian schools. In our book, we analyze how teacher candidates – especially those like Luciana who speak languages racialized in Canada – make sense of new knowledge about supporting multilingual learners in relation to this racial and linguistic ordering. We traced the dynamic shifts in thinking and practice as participants drew on their personal, professional and academic experiences to interpret what it means to work with multilingual students in the classroom.

Our book makes three important contributions to the growing scholarship on teacher education and multilingualism. The first is its analytical scope. At times, we zoom in on interviews with teacher candidates or the major assignments (e.g. lesson plans) they created for the required seminar mentioned earlier. We also provide close analysis of their learning based on Me Map videos we co-created with multilingual youth, in which youth told us about themselves, their friends and family, their ambitions in school, and their languages and cultures. Other times, we consider the 500+ responses we received from teacher candidates in our program on a pedagogical content-knowledge test about supporting multilingual learners. Complementing this broader perspective are interviews with ESL teachers and teacher-leaders, as well as teacher educators in Ontario’s other pre-service programs. Finally, we situate these various levels of analysis within a reading of the policies that govern teacher education in this province. The breadth of this research design allowed us to identify clear connections between different levels of policy appropriation: the policies themselves, teacher-education curriculum, course design, and the lived experiences of multilingual youth, teacher candidates, and teacher educators.

Second, our book identifies the siloed divisions in scholarship of language, race/racism and teacher education. Few applied-linguistic studies of multilingualism and teacher education frame their inquiry in relation to race/racism or (de-)colonization, although this is starting to change. Similarly, critical anti-racist and decolonial scholarship on teacher education only rarely considers multilingualism or language education. In the book, we reflect on how these disciplinary divisions impacted our own study. We describe the shifts in our own thinking and offer them as an example of teacher-education research that takes the relationship between language and race/racism seriously.

Finally, our book makes an important intervention about the ethics of publishing research. There is growing interest in the ethics of doing applied-linguistic research (e.g. de Costa 2016; Pinter & Kuchah, 2021). But how scholars disseminate our work in ethical ways is not often considered. Ours was a complicated study. We were lucky to have a talented group of doctoral-student researchers on the project for almost its entirety. Far from just ‘carrying out’ the work that I as PI, or Antoinette and Julie as co-PIs had conceived, the entire team was responsible for designing, conducting and analyzing the data. The only ethical choice for us was to honour this collective work and share in the writing of this book. It made the writing process a bit more complicated with 10 co-authors! But we think the result is more robust and interesting. We hope you agree.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Antisocial Language Teaching by JPB Gerald.

A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies

We will soon be publishing A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies by Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz. In this post the authors explain how the book came about.

In June 2009, John Edwards, editor of the Multilingual Matters book series, contacted Durk. He suggested writing a general book on the subject of Linguistic Landscape. In John’s words, “this would be the book that scholars would turn to when wanting an introduction, an overview, and an assessment of this emerging field.” At the time, the field of Linguistic Landscapes was flourishing and it was obviously gaining traction. An increasing number of researchers had started to carry out inspiring studies, presented their work at conferences, and published numerous articles and book chapters. The series of annual Linguistic Landscapes workshops kicked off in Tel Aviv in January 2008 and has now celebrated its 14th edition in September 2023 in Madrid.

As usual, our problem was that we were involved in carrying out too many projects, preparing presentations and writing publications. We could not find the concentration and the time to write such a book on Linguistic Landscape studies. Moreover, as Durk wrote back to John: “I tried to design a table of contents for a full-length book. Yet, I came to the conclusion that although many exciting things are going on in the field of linguistic landscape studies, it is not ‘mature’ or ‘coherent’ enough to write such a full-length study.” The plan for the book remained for a long time on the back burner on our list of future plans.

Over the years, we remained active working with Linguistic Landscape data. We published several articles and chapters, for example, on Linguistic Landscapes inside multilingual schools or on Linguistic Landscapes and translanguaging. However, our focus was on multilingual education.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, under strict lockdown, we started to design the book and we systematically collected published data on Linguistic Landscape studies. We drafted a table of contents, which was changed several times, and we started the writing process. Other commitments often had to be given priority and frequently delayed the process, but now the result is here.

Of course, a book like this implies making many choices. For example, numerous studies were not included, because we considered those not to belong to the field, whereas others might disagree. As the reader will notice, the book is richly illustrated with over 90 photographs in colour (!) of signage we had seen with our own eyes. The selection of the illustrations was a complex and difficult process. With this blog, we include two photos that for different reasons did not make it to the book. The first we considered for the cover of the book because it has the word “Panorama”. The photo illustrates the difficulty of knowing in which language a sign is. This photo was taken in Beynac in France, so probably it is French. However, the word panorama can just as well be English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Frisian or even Basque. The second photo is the only sign we have that combines Basque and Frisian, the two languages we have studied most. The statement in three languages “Leave your language trail” is what we intend to do with this book.

Durk Gorter, Ikerbasque Research Professor and University of the Basque Country
(durk.gorter@gmail.com)

Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country
(Jasone.cenoz@gmail.com)

This book is available Open Access and can be downloaded here.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Political Activism in the Linguistic Landscape by Philip Seargeant with Korina Giaxoglou and Frank Monaghan.

(Socio)linguistic Citizenship and What it Means to Have a Voice

This month we published The Power of Voice in Transforming Multilingual Societies edited by Julia Gspandl, Christina Korb, Angelika Heiling and Elizabeth J. Erling. In this post the editors explain the concept of ‘voice’.

In discourses of philanthropy and social justice, the phrase “to give voice” is used almost as ubiquitously as “to empower”. Often, it is used to mean to speak on somebody’s behalf, perhaps even without their involvement. Yet, much like it is very difficult to give people the power to do anything, we cannot give individuals or communities a voice. In fact, they do not need to be given a voice, nor anybody to speak on their behalf. They, indeed, have a voice. The question is: Is that voice being heard, being taken seriously? Have they been provided with the space and tools to develop a “voice worth hearing”, as Hymes asked in 1996?

The concept of voice is complex and multifaceted, and its meaning can vary depending on the context in which it is used. Indeed, the idea of voice has been taken up by scholars in various fields investigating a range of notions. In our book, we see “voice” as the communicative power and effective expression of a language user’s views and perceptions in a given context. In sociolinguistics, issues of voice concern the potential social exclusion of those who do not have a command of the socially esteemed language varieties that are prevalent in educational and civil contexts. Exercising voice is a way of challenging the inequalities embedded in society and critiquing the way they are systematically reproduced.

Voice is closely related to agency, which refers to the ability to take action and effect change in one’s environment. In order for marginalized voices to be heard and for people to exercise agency, they need to be able to communicate effectively and persuasively in a given context. It is not only about being heard but also about the “freedom to develop a voice worth hearing” (Hymes, 1996: 64). If minority language users are to be taken seriously, they need to understand and connect with the people and contexts that they seek to change. Cultivating this voice takes time, effort, and the support of others through education, whether formal or informal (Rampton, Cooke & Holmes, 2018).

In this context, (socio)linguistic citizenship is a valuable concept. It refers to what people do with and around language(s) to position themselves agentively, and to craft new subjectivities of political speakerhood, often outside of those prescribed or legitimated in institutional frameworks of the state. Although bottom-up approaches are a key aim of (socio)linguistic citizenship, their facilitation is connected to a range of challenges, particularly regarding the sustainability of any such efforts. This highlights the importance of voice, including voices from the grassroots, and the importance of an engaged, committed community.

Speakers and signers of minoritized communities need a platform, the space and tools to gain knowledge, spread their ideas, and make themselves heard. Research on their languages should therefore include commitments to voice, to participation and agency, lest researchers become unwitting accomplices in linguistic oppression. Reclaiming control over one’s language and reality –  that is what it means to exercise’s one’s voice.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship edited by Quentin Williams, Ana Deumert and Tommaso M. Milani.

Teacher–Researcher Collaboration as a Pathway for Sustaining Translanguaging Pedagogies in K-12 Classrooms

This month we published (Re)imagining Translanguaging Pedagogies through Teacher–Researcher Collaboration edited by Leah Shepard-Carey and Zhongfeng Tian. In this post the editors explain how the book came about.

We identify as language educators and teacher educators with deep commitments to classroom practice, and have further centered our research endeavors in classroom contexts with different stakeholders (teachers, administrators, students, families, etc). Translanguaging pedagogies have been documented increasingly in a variety of classroom contexts, and have shown how honoring and integrating multilingual students’ linguistic repertoires can transform learning (e.g. Cioè‐Peña, 2022; CUNY-NYSIEB, 2021; Ossa Para & Proctor, 2021; Rajendram, 2021; de los Rios & Seltzer, 2017; Tian 2022). As a pedagogical framework, educators should take up ideological stances that value multilingualism, engage in intentional translanguaging pedagogical designs, and shift to meet the needs of learners in the classroom (García et al., 2017).

Adapting this pedagogical framework to co-stances, co-designs, and co-shifts (Tian & Shepard-Carey, 2020), this edited volume emphasizes the potential of teacher–researcher collaboration as one avenue towards expanding the use of translanguaging pedagogies in classrooms. In 2018, we met on a panel at TESOL International’s annual conference and discovered that we were not only doing similar work on translanguaging pedagogies, but also shared a passion for collaborating with educators. Through discussion about our experiences, we observed how translanguaging pedagogies not only required critical and asset-based stances of multilingualism, but required educators (and researchers) to actively address systemic language ideologies and curricular barriers, among various other obstacles. Understanding the challenges of integrating translanguaging into school and classroom culture, we saw a gap in the literature of detailed accounts of how teachers and researchers could work together to design and carry out translanguaging pedagogies and address these challenges. As such, with our adapted framework as a guiding post, we ventured to explore the complex processes of collaborative partnerships in the context of translanguaging pedagogies.

This volume has been over three years in the making, which included the COVID-19 pandemic with both of us finishing dissertations and transitioning into faculty positions. Hence, we are so glad to be able to finally share this work with our communities. This volume aimed to showcase teacher–researcher collaboration from a variety of primary and secondary (K-12) classroom contexts. This included various content areas and program designs such as STEM, newcomer English-medium classrooms, dual immersion and bilingual education, world language, literacy, and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). We also sought to incorporate international perspectives, with chapters from Australia, Austria, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United States. Each of the chapters in this volume position teacher–researcher collaboration and classroom engagement as part of a larger approach to sustaining translanguaging pedagogies in classrooms and resisting the research-practice divide in education. The cover art, by the very talented Martha Samaniego Calderón, serves as a representation of these complex collaborative processes, illustrating how various members share and negotiate unique and invaluable knowledge and experience, which moves towards collaborative and transformative translanguaging praxis.

We are immensely grateful for the contributions in this volume, the scholars who have inspired this work (Ofelia García, Susana Ibarra Johnson, Kate Seltzer, CUNY-NYSIEB team and many more!). We believe that researchers, educators, and teacher educators will benefit from this work. We hope that, as one of the reviewers, Peter Sayer said, “[this] volume will serve as an important mentor text for researchers and practitioners who want to co-design and carry out collaborative translanguaging-focused projects in classrooms.”

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Translanguaging and English as a Lingua Franca in the Plurilingual Classroom by Anna Mendoza.