Plurilingual Pedagogies Critical and Creative Endeavors for Equitable Language in Education

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.

INTRODUCTION by Sunny Lau & Saskia Stille.- Part I: PERSPECTIVES ON PLURILINGUAL PEDAGOGIES.- Plurilingualism and learning: Revisiting 25 years of (mis)understanding multilingual norms in language education, policies and practices by Daniele Moore.-  Critical engagement with plurilingual pedagogies: Recurrent problematics by Angel Lin.-  Problematizing the uncritical multi/plural approaches to pedagogy by Ryuko Kubota.- Part II: SEMIOLINGUISTIC CONNECTIONS.- Pluralistic approaches in early language education: Shifting paradigms in language didactics by Daniela Coelho & Yecid Ortega.- Crossing borders and challenging colonial discourses from the Nepantla: A border pedagogy that uses art and children’s conocimientos in indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Mexico by Núñez Méndez Omar.- Leveraging children’s diverse communicative repertoires in elementary content-based instruction by Gail Prasad.- Dialogue/Response by Li Wei.- Part III : ROLE  OF HOME LANGUAGES, CULTURES & IDENTITIES.- Naskapi language and identity in the classroom:  Developing and supporting writers through a bilingual approach by Loretta Robinson & Avril Aitken.- The promise of linguistic biographies to carve out plurilingual spaces against all odds by Shelley Taylor.- ELT and plurilingualism in two Canadian post-secondary institutions: Towards context-specific perspectives by Angelica Galante.- Dialogue/Response by Jim Cummins.- Part IV : CRITICAL PLURI- LITERACY PRACTICES.- Translanguaging for critical bi-literacy: English and French teachers’ collaboration in transgressive pedagogy by Sunny Lau.- A critical thematic unit in a teaching praxicum: Health issues and plurilingualism in the “English” classroom by Mario Lopez.- Remaking the ground on which they stand:  Supporting multilingual literacies to teach critical literacies by Saskia Stille.- Dialogue/Response by Kelleen Toohey.