This talk provides a framework for the symposium: Plurilingual teaching and learning: giving participation, equality and social justice in education a chance. The talk outlines some prevalent epistemological traditions related to plurilingual pedagogy before highlighting principal issues that have emerged from teaching practices that promote diversity and social justice.
In the past few years, calls have been made for a multilingual/plurilingual shift in pedagogical practices, moving beyond what was principally the area of Applied Linguistics (Cook, 1999; Cummins, 2009) to more interdisciplinary areas, with an understanding that 1) language(s) play a key role in the (shared) construction of knowledge; and 2) there is an interconnectedness between languages that should be taken into consideration for plurilingual pedagogy. As these educational practices mesh with wider understandings of ‘liquid modernity’ (Baumann, 2000), pedagogical and epistemological challenges inevitably emerge. Not least of these issues are the questions of how plurilingual education can contribute to educational equality, social cohesion and social fairness. This talk will provide a framework for discussion of plurilingual teaching and learning, beginning with an overview and discussion of convergences and divergences of some of the more prevalent epistemological traditions that transverse notions of plurilingual pedagogy (e.g. pluriliteracies, code-switching, translanguaging, heteroglossia). International perspectives from several countries, including North America and Europe, form the backdrop for our paper as we outline some of the ways in which educators are attempting to address the needs of an increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse society, in particular, how plurilingual teaching might promote social activitism, social justice and social cohesion. Finally, the fact that plurilingual pedagogy is not without its challenges is foregrounded (Canagarajah, 2011), preparing the groundwork for further discussion in this symposium. References: Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Canagarajah, S. (2011). Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. Applied Linguistics Review, 2, 1–28. Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185–209. Cummins, J. (2009). Multilingualism in the English-language classroom: Pedagogical considerations. TESOL Quarterly, 43, 317–321.
