Translanguaging: a pedagogy of heteroglossic hope

Abstract

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.