Plurilingualism In Teaching And Learning

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.

This book introduces a new topic to applied linguistics: the significance of the TESOL teacher’s background as a learner and user of additional languages. The development of the global TESOL profession as a largely English-only enterprise has led to the accepted view that, as long as the teacher has English proficiency, then her or his other languages are irrelevant. The book questions this view. Learners are in the process of becoming plurilingual, and this book argues that they are best served by a teacher who has experience of plurilingualism. The book proposes a new way of looking at teacher linguistic identity by examining in detail the rich language biographies of teachers: of growing up with two or more languages; of learning languages through schooling or as an adult, of migrating to another linguaculture, of living in a plurilingual family and many more. The book examines the history of language-in-education policy which has led to the development of the TESOL profession in Australia and elsewhere as a monolingual enterprise. It shows that teachers’ language backgrounds have been ignored in teacher selection, teacher training and ongoing professional development. The author draws on literature in teacher cognition, bilingualism studies, intercultural competence, bilingual lifewriting and linguistic identity to argue that languages play a key part in the development of teachers’ professional beliefs, identity, language awareness and language learning awareness. Drawing on three studies involving 115 teachers from Australia and seven other countries, the author demonstrates conclusively that large numbers of teachers do have plurilingual experiences; that these experiences are ignored in the profession, but that they have powerful effects on the formation of beliefs about language learning and teaching which underpin good practice. Those teachers who identify as monolingual almost invariably have some language learning experience, but it was low-level, short-lived and unsuccessful. How does the experience of successful or unsuccessful language learning and language use affect one’s identity, beliefs and practice as an English language teacher? What kinds of experience are most beneficial? These concepts and findings have implications for teacher language education, teacher professional development and the current calls for increased plurilingual practices in the TESOL classroom.

This book is the first edited international volume focused on critical perspectives on plurilingualism in deaf education, which encompasses education in and out of schools and across the lifespan. The book provides a critical overview and snapshot of the use of sign languages in education for deaf children today and explores contemporary issues in education for deaf children such as bimodal bilingualism, translanguaging, teacher education, sign language interpreting and parent sign language learning. The research presented in this book marks a significant development in understanding deaf children's language use and provides insights into the flexibility and pragmatism of young deaf people and their families’ communicative practices. It incorporates the views of young deaf people and their parents regarding their language use that are rarely visible in the research to date.

This book critically engages with theoretical shifts marked by the ‘multilingual turn’ in applied linguistics, and articulates the complexities associated with naming and engaging with the everyday language practices of bi/multilingual communities. It discusses methodological approaches that enable researchers and educators to observe and interact with these communities and to understand their teaching and learning needs. It also highlights pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies involved with learning and teaching language and/or content curriculum to students across various learning and educational contexts. The book addresses recent debates on the multi/plural turn in applied linguistics and articulates the limitations of these debates - particularly the absence of discussion of social power relations and contexts in applying different theoretical lenses. It features empirical research from primarily North American classrooms to highlight how plurilingual pedagogies take shape in unique educational contexts, resisting monolingual approaches to language in education. Furthermore, it includes commentary/response pieces from established scholars in dialogue with recent plurilingual research in the field, to put the work in critical perspective within extant theories and literature.

The Routledge Handbook of Plurilingual Language Education is the first comprehensive publication on plurilingualism, offering a multidimensional reflection on the nature, scope, and potential of plurilingualism in language education and society. Authored by a range of internationally recognized experts, the Handbook provides an overview of key perspectives on plurilingualism in a complementary range of fields. After a comprehensive introduction to the concept itself, 24 chapters are organized in six parts, each examining plurilingualism through a different lens. The Handbook spans historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions, examines cognitive and neuroscientific implications, and the limitations of boundaries before moving to a pragmatic perspective: How is plurilingual language education developing in different contexts around the world? How can it contribute to language revitalization? How can it be expected to develop in education, digital spaces, and society as a whole? Written for an international audience, this handbook is an indispensable reference tool for scholars in education and applied linguistics, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, and policy makers.

This edited collection provides unprecedented insight into the emerging field of multilingual education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Multilingual education is claimed to have many benefits, amongst which are that it can improve both content and language learning, especially for learners who may have low ability in the medium of instruction and are consequently struggling to learn. The book represents a range of Sub-Saharan school contexts and describes how multilingual strategies have been developed and implemented within them to support the learning of content and language. It looks at multilingual learning from several points of view, including ‘translanguaging’, or the use of multiple languages – and especially African languages – for learning and language-supportive pedagogy, or the implementation of a distinct pedagogy to support learners working through the medium of a second language. The book puts forward strategies for creating materials, classroom environments and teacher education programmes which support the use of all of a student’s languages to improve language and content learning. The contexts which the book describes are challenging, including low school resourcing, poverty and low literacy in the home, and school policy which militates against the use of African languages in school. The volume also draws on multilingual education approaches which have been successfully carried out in higher resource countries and lend themselves to being adapted for use in SSA. It shows how multilingual learning can bring about transformation in education and provides inspiration for how these strategies might spread and be further developed to improve learning in schools in SSA and beyond. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com.

Different regions of the world are making increasing demands for educational reform, especially when institutions are dissatisfied with the level of proficiency of their graduates. Since the realization of how important English education is to global success, reform to English education is becoming progressively vital in societies all over the world. The Handbook of Research on Curriculum Reform Initiatives in English Education provides research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of a variety of areas related to English education and reform, as well as applications within curriculum development and instructional design. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as teachers’ roles, teaching methods, and professional development, this book is ideally designed for researchers, educators, administrators, policymakers, interpreters, translators, and linguists seeking current research on the existing body of knowledge about curriculum reform in English education in an international context.

Multilingual Approaches for Teaching and Learning outlines the opportunities and challenges of multilingual approaches in mainstream education in Europe. The book, which draws on research findings from several officially monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual countries in Europe, discusses approaches to multilingual education which capitalise on students’ multilingual resources from early childhood to higher education. This book synthesises research on multilingual education, relates theory to practice, and discusses different pedagogical approaches from diverse perspectives. The first section of the book outlines multilingual approaches in early childhood education and primary school, the second looks at multilingual approaches in secondary school and higher education, and the third examines the influence of parents, policy-makers, and professional development on the implementation and sustainability of multilingual approaches. The book demonstrates that educators can leverage students’ multilingualism to promote learning and help students achieve their full potential. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of language education, psychology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.