Transformative pedagogy for inclusion and social justice through translanguaging, co-learning, and transpositioning

Abstract

The idea of translanguaging has disrupted much of the thinking in bilingual education. A common misunderstanding, however, is that translanguaging was intended to be a language teaching strategy. This article seeks to explore what a translanguaging approach to language teaching entails, with specific reference to the education of minoritized and racialized bilingual and multilingual learners in the school systems in English-dominant countries such as the UK. In particular, I highlight the connections with and contributions to the inclusion and social justice agenda that the translanguaging project aims to make. Translanguaging takes one step further from multilingualism in challenging the raciolinguistic ideologies that view bilingual learners as having separate languages and languaging lives. It instead views their racial/ethnic identities and linguistic practices together, that is, their translanguaging being. My main argument here is that to use translanguaging as a pedagogy for inclusion and social justice requires a change of mindset, not just practice – that is, translanguaging pedagogy rather than pedagogical translanguaging – which can be achieved through processes of ‘co-learning’ and ‘transpositioning’.