Plurilingualism in Teaching and Learning

Complexities Across Contexts

Julie Choi, Sue Ollerhead, Julie Choi, Sue Ollerhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315392448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Assembling a rich and diverse range of research studies on the role of plurilingualism across a wide variety of teaching and learning settings, this book supports teacher reflection and action in practical ways and illustrates how researchers tease out and analyze the complex realities of their educational environments. With a focus on education policies, teaching practices, training, and resourcing, this volume addresses a range of mainstream and specialized contexts and examines the position of learners and teachers as users of plurilingual repertoires. Providing a close look into the possibilities and constraints of plurilingual education, this book helps researchers and educators clarify and strengthen their understandings of the links between language and literacy and offers them new ways to think more rigorously and critically about the language ideologies that shape their own beliefs and approaches in language teaching and learning.

1

INTRODUCTION

Sue Ollerhead, Julie Choi, and Mei French

Plurilingualism in Language Studies

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impact of globalisation and new technologies has seen previously isolated linguistic groups come into increasing contact with each other. This has led applied linguists concerned with linguistic diversity and multilingualism to shift away from associating the term multilingual with an “enumerative strategy of counting languages and romanticising a plurality based on these putative language counts” (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, p. 16). Instead of thinking about languages in additive, discrete systems where we have distinct cognitive compartments for separate languages with different competencies for each (see de Jong, 2011; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007 on the ‘collateral damage’ such embedded notions of language may be perpetrating), languages are thought of as always in contact with and mutually influencing each other, always open to renegotiation and reconstruction, and as mobile resources that are appropriated by people for their purposes (Canagarajah, 2013, pp. 6–7). Thus, increasingly, researchers do not start with languages in language studies but with people, translingual practices, places and spaces where communication transcends both “individual languages” and words, thus involving “diverse semiotic resources and ecological affordances” (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 6). This proliferation of new ways of conceptualising linguistic diversity has resulted in the Council of Europe and scholars such as Moore (2006) and Piccardo (2013) drawing a distinction between the terms “multilingualism” and “plurilingualism”. While the term “multilingualism” denotes several different languages co-existing in a given physical location or social context, the term “plurilingualism” accounts for the ways in which individuals’ linguistic repertories overlap and intersect and develop in different ways with respect to languages, dialects and registers. Thus, while multilingualism is “the study of societal contact”, plurilingualism allows us to study the individual’s repertoires and agency in several languages (Moore & Gajo, 2009, p. 138).

Such a shift has resulted in an explosion of new terminologies that help us to think about language practices in more fluid ways. García & Li Wei (2014) describe translanguaging as “the enaction of language practices that use different features that had previously moved independently constrained by different histories, but that now are experienced against each other in speakers’ interactions as one new whole” (p. 22). Li Wei (2015) also describes translanguaging as “the strategic deployment of multiple semiotic resources, e.g. languages, modalities, sensory cues, to create a socio-interactional space for learning and understanding, knowledge construction and identity negotiation” (p. 32). Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen & Møller (2011) use the term polylanguaging to illustrate the [interactional] use of features associated with different “languages”, even when speakers know only a few features associated with (some of) these “languages” (p. 33). Rather than assuming connections between language and culture, ethnicity, nationality or geography, metrolingualism, as coined by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010), “seeks to explore how such relations are produced, resisted, defied or rearranged” (p. 246). Blackledge and Creese (2010) draw on Bakhtinian notions such as heteroglossia, polyphony, double-voicedness, dialogue, and multivocality to reflect the notion of simultaneity of multiple meanings, intentions, personalities and consciousness and the traces of a speaker’s past, the present context and future desires that are embedded within utterances. Lin (2013) pushes for ‘plurilingual pedagogies’ in language teaching and learning, “fostering plurilingual competences[,] … creating and affirming plurlingual identities and subjectivities” (p. 540). While similar but different in their own ways, scholars in this area of language studies take the overall stance of rejecting notions of language as “the co-existence of multiple linguistic systems [as] discrete, ahistorical, and relatively self-contained” (Bailey, 2012, p. 500). The focus in multilingual studies, as we understand it, now inherently starts with a polyphonic lens that seeks to capture the simultaneity of multiple language use, the inclusion of various semiotic resources, and the socio-political/historical and negotiation processes that shape utterances in a certain point in time and space. “Polycentricity”, the crisscrossing of multiple meanings but also multiple belongings (Blommaert, 2005, p. 75) is inherently present in today’s studies.

García (in García and Sylvan, 2011) argues that today’s multilingual and multicultural classrooms are defined by a “plurality” of language practices. She eschews the notion of pedagogies that cater for specific language groups, instead advocating for a focus on the singularity of individual students within a classroom characterised by multiple linguistic practices. To this end, she espouses Makoni & Pennycook’s (2007) term “singularization of plurality—that is, a focus on the individual differences in the discursive regimes we call languages” (p. 386). Certainly, with rising global mobility of many types, the focus for researchers and educators is turning increasingly to extreme linguistic heterogeneity brought about by new immigration patterns into settings previously constructed as monolingual or as having relatively homogeneous multilingual populations.

Multilingualism and Literacy

Within prevailing teaching practices in many mainstream educational teaching settings, additional language learners experience serious challenges in achieving high literacy levels and literacy engagement (August & Hakuta, 1998; Collier, 1992; Cummins, 2000). In Canada, Ashworth (2000) noted that despite multiculturalism being promoted in many educational systems, bilingual children were gradually becoming more at risk of losing their home language rather than developing and maintaining it alongside English or French. This is despite the fact that successive empirical studies over the past century have found that literacy development in two or more languages provides not only linguistic benefits, but also cognitive and social advantages for bilingual/multilingual students (Cummins & Early, 2011; García, Bartlett, & Kleifgen, 2007). Studies have also found that achievement in first language literacy is a key indicator of success in academic literacy in the second language, and that home language maintenance supports second language and academic development (Thomas & Collier, 1997). However, educational policy still privileges ‘elite’ foreign language learning over maintenance and development of home languages and literacies. In Australia, Eisenchlas, Schalley and Guillemin (2015) state that “the more multilingual Australian society has become, the more assimilationist the policies and the more monolingual the orientation of the society politicians envisage and pursue” (p. 170). In relation to literacy education, there are critiques of literacy education being limited to English monolingual assumptions, and marginalising multilinguals and multilingualism (see Coleman, 2012; Cross, 2011, 2012; Lo Bianco, 2002). According to García (2009), schools need “to recognise the multiple language practices that heterogeneous populations increasingly bring and which integrated schooling, more than any other context”, has the potential to liberate (p. 157). To date, however, these research findings have done little to influence multilingual education policy and practice.

In recent years, multilingual literacy researchers have proposed a suite of principles they have found to enhance students’ multilingual literacy proficiency. We now understand that bilingual students’ cultural knowledge and linguistic abilities are vital for enabling them to engage with academic tasks across the curriculum; teaching practices that draw upon students’ identities will lead to their investment in literacy learning; and collaboration between schools and parents from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds offers a rich resource for literacy development (see Cummins, 2006; Helot & Young 2002; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Molyneux, 2009). As de Jong and Freeman Field (2010) discuss, teaching strategies from bilingual settings can be adapted to support students in linguistically heterogeneous classrooms. Methodologies associated with research into effective multilingual literacy practices include building upon students’ funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), and the use of collective pedagogical inquiry frameworks that use teachers/school based researchers and university-based educators/researchers to work together to observe and document pedagogical strategies being made in particular contexts. The case studies serve to document the feasibility of using specific multilingual pedagogical strategies that use students’ home languages as valuable resources for learning and teaching.

Theoretical Lenses

A number of theoretical lenses inform research into multilingual literacy practices. The concept of multiliteracies, introduced by the New London Group in 1996 and developed by numerous researchers such as Cope and Kalantzis (2000; 2009), Hull and Schultz (2001), and Pahl and Rowsell (2005), emphasises multimodality as a discerning feature, focusing on the multiple semiotic resources available to students involved in meaning making, including audio, visual, linguistic, spatial and performative. This allows students to extend and adapt their literacy learning by responding to cultural and linguistic diversity and promoting the use of home languages within the classroom.

Another useful framework is that of post-structural theories of identity and the concepts of identity positioning (Toohey, 2000) and identity investment (Norton, 2000). McKinney and Norton (2008) propose that “foregrounding identity and the issues that this raises are central in responding critically to diversity in language and education” (McKinney & Norton, 2008, p.195). Drawing on the notion of identities as temporal, fluctuating, shaped by social context and coming about as a result of membership of specific communities, teaching strategies that harness students’ funds of knowledge and draw upon their linguistic and social capital help students to develop a positive learning identity.

Complementing these theoretical frameworks are pedagogies such as the Literacy Engagement Framework (Cummins & Early, 2011), which emphasises engagement in literacy tasks as a necessary condition for literacy achievement. Reinforcing and affirming students’ identity positions is crucial in this regard. Thus, activities such as identity texts, which include elements of creativity and cultural expression through multiple modes (e.g. art, drama, animation) allow students to articulate, shape and account for their identities in front of various audiences and engage in feedback and dialog which allows for intercultural sharing.

According to Ntelioglou, Fannin, Montanera, and Cummins (2014), class rooms that facilitate students’ use of multiple languages through multimodal texts allow students to select their own multiple linguistic repertories. In other words, they are able to make meaning through their own choice of medium. Such an approach, or “stance”, cultivates learner autonomy, identity investment and literacy engagement (p. 12). When teachers open up instructional spaces for multilingual and multimodal forms of pedagogy, languages other than English are legitimised in the classroom and students’ home languages and community connections become resources for learning. Thus, teachers play an important role in not only bringing these ideas to their classroom practices but how they weave the plurilingual into either resource-poor spaces or spaces that have a long-standing monolingual or mono-centric ideological structure, tradition or formal policy.

Literature in TESOL and language education is starting to show examples of teachers taking up a plurilingual stance. Before we turn to the kinds of comments we are beginning to see, we will clarify what we mean by teachers taking up a plurilingual stance.

What we Mean by a “Plurilingual Stance”

We base our understanding of what we mean by taking up a plurilingual stance by foregrounding it in Canagarajah’s (2011, p.1) statement that, for multilinguals, languages are part of a repertoire that is accessed for their communicative purposes; languages are not discrete and separated, but form an integrated system for them; multilingual competence emerges out of local practices where mul tiple languages are negotiated for communication; competence doesn’t consist of separate competencies for each language, but a multicompetence that functions symbiotically for the different languages in one’s repertoire; and, for these reasons, proficiency for multilinguals is focused on repertoire building—i.e., developing abilities in the different functions served by different languages—rather than total mastery of each and every language.

We understand teachers taking up a plurilingual stance typically embody the following beliefs and understandings:

a) Successful learners of English are successful plurilingual learners and communicators, rather than pseudo native speakers.

b) All of a student’s language knowledge is part of their single plurilingual repertoire, and languages are not siloed in their mind.

c) Understanding of plurilingual practices such as translanguaging, switching, mixing, translating as the norm.

d) Understanding that language competence is realised in its performance and practice, not as a set of knowledge inside a learner’s head.

As a consequence of these ways of thinking about language then, a teacher with a plurilingual stance would seek ways to:

e) acknowledge multilinguality of students and society as something that is both normal and valued as an achievement;

f) activate students’ existing knowledge of and in the languages that they know;

g) link new knowledge to that existing knowledge;

h) link language learning and literacy skill to existing knowledge of language and literacy in the full range of languages possessed by learners;

i) use a range of students’ plurilingual resources and practices in the classroom to support learning through various means including interaction, individual tasks and resources;

j) build on students’ plurilingual repertoires so that these repertoires expand and mature as the students do.

Teachers Taking up a “Plurilingual Stance”

In English-medium countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, increased migration flows have resulted in English language learners (ELLs) enrolling in greater numbers than non-English language learners in some urban areas. Accordingly, a new focus has been placed upon the ways mainstream teachers are prepared to meet the language and literacy needs of ELLs. Existing research suggests that mainstream secondary school teachers feel inadequately prepared to cope with such learners (Gitlin, Buendia, Crosland & Doumbia, 2003; Reeves, 2006). Moreover, many mainstream teachers fail to identify with the practice of drawing upon students’ home languages as a resource for language and literacy teaching. Much of this research has been conducted in the United States, and includes studies on teacher attitudes towards inclusion (Franson, 1999; Youngs & Youngs, 2001), curriculum changes (Reeves, 2006) and teacher training (Crandall & Christison, 2016; Hutchison & Hadjioannou, 2011)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Plurilingual Language-in-Education Policies
• Part II: Plurilingual Student Repertoires
• Part III: Plurilingual Classroom Practices and Teacher Perspectives
• Part IV: Plurilingualism in Higher Education Contexts
• List of Contributors
• Index