Translanguaging is increasingly used to describe how multilingual users make meaning by drawing across languages and modalities, and has been advanced as a socially-just pedagogy. Yet, recent criticisms around conceptual clarity and originality raise concerns about how it is understood and enacted. To explore whether and, if so, how (1) teachers' understandings of translanguaging inform their pedagogy, and (2) translanguaging practices shape participation, one Italian and two Spanish language teachers at a university-hosted community language school in York, UK, were invited to complete a questionnaire, and their lessons were audio-recorded over two months. Thematic analysis of teacher accounts and interactional episodes shows broad endorsement of translanguaging, both in principle (as a stance valuing multilingual meaning-making) and in practice (where planned instructional strategies blend with co-learning and responsive shifts). Teacher-led translanguaging enhanced target-language comprehension and engagement, while learners across varying proficiency levels treated translanguaging as the classroom norm, drawing on different languages and semiotic resources while pursuing language-specific goals. Breaking away from the target-language-only dogma, this community language school offers a compelling example of how translanguaging can serve as a context-responsive pedagogy for inclusion.
This qualitative case study examines how multilingual college students' language ideologies informed their approaches to translanguaging pedagogy in an interactive read-aloud video project. Eight multilingual undergraduates created interactive read-aloud videos for K-5 emergent bilingual children as part of a community-based project. Although participants described translanguaging as fluid, embodied, and meaningful, their videos consistently defaulted to sentence-level translation and English-centered comprehension support. Interview data revealed that these choices were shaped by monoglossic and diglossic ideologies internalized through schooling, which positioned languages as separate, hierarchical, and tied to distinct domains of use. Findings suggest that multilingualism alone does not automatically lead to translanguaging pedagogy; rather, enacting translanguaging in instructional contexts requires sustained opportunities for ideological reflection and the cultivation of heteroglossic understandings of language.
This article critically examines the persistence of deficit orientations towards student writing across time and geolinguistic contexts. Drawing on the Academic Literacies theoretical framework, we interrogate how the documented 'gap' or distance between student-writers and dominant academic conventions continues to be constructed as deficit, despite decades of critique. We revisit two longitudinal studies conducted at parallel historical moments of widening participation: in the United Kingdom and in Chile. Through comparative analysis of interviews and texts, we identify three dimensions of distance that students articulate: social (class, race, gender and family background versus an imagined 'traditional' student), linguistic (lexical and stylistic repertoires positioned as insufficient), and epistemic (exclusion of vernacular or subjective resources from knowledge-making). Drawing on findings illustrating student perspectives and evidence from the literature on teacher experiences, we discuss possible reasons for the persistence of deficit orientations and propose a heuristic that reconceptualises the gap as a dialogic space of 'becoming'. This perspective foregrounds students' linguistic and semiotic repertoires as resources, and calls for pedagogies and policies that move beyond remediation to embrace plural subjectivities and epistemic justice in higher education. The discussion is timely given the ongoing global commitment to expansion and diversification in higher education.
Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) and Dual Language Immersion (DLI) programs have burgeoned, yet studies, policies, and program models remain overwhelmingly centered on Spanish as the partner language. This leaves DLBE and DLI in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) profoundly underrepresented-particularly LCTLs that are typologically, scriptually, and culturally distant from English. This qualitative case study addresses this gap by examining an elementary-school Urdu-English DLI program serving a Pakistani-American community in the U.S. Drawing on 18 months of a research-practice partnership and guided by Hornberger's (2004) continua of biliteracy, we analyze how the school community navigates systemic constraints and instructional needs in the absence of established models for Urdu. Findings reveal both convergence with DLBE research based on more commonly taught languages-such as flexible language allocation, capacious teacher agency, and purposeful translanguaging-and new insights unique to LCTL contexts, including challenges in addressing biscriptual literacy development and the heightened burden placed on teachers as curricular and assessment designers. By theorizing the realities of LCTL implementation, this study contributes timely insights for the design of inclusive, equitable, and sustainable DLBE programs that can serve diverse linguistic communities who remain sorely underrepresented and underserved in current education and research.
This study investigates in-service elementary school teachers' emotion labor and the ways in which they resist emotion labor and exert agency when teaching young multilingual immigrant students. While research on language teachers' emotions has recently increased, little is known about how sociopolitical contexts shape the emotional experiences of elementary school teachers who work with young immigrant students. Drawing on an ecological theoretical framework, this study explores how teachers' emotional experiences help them sustain professional practice under institutional pressures by analyzing semi-structured interviews, participants' online posts and comments, reflective blogs, teachers' YouTube channels, and media interviews. The analysis revealed that the complex ecological characteristics of expectations placed on teachers are major factors in shaping teachers' emotion labor, including government policies, power relations at the institutional level, and the lack of language resources to teach students. The analysis also showed that emotion labor could serve as a catalyst for agency when it led teachers to problematize structural deficiencies and engage in practices that reconfigure resources. This research calls for a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between emotions and power in teacher education programs, classroom practices, and policies for teachers working with young multilingual students.
This study explores general education teacher candidates' (TCs) pedagogical knowledge (PK) of translanguaging and their perceptions of their enactment through microteaching. While research on how TCs develop PK of translanguaging is growing, less is known about how they implement it in practice. Using a qualitative case-study design, I analyzed microteaching videos, lesson plans, written reflections, and discussion transcripts to examine how five TCs integrated translanguaging into lessons for emergent bi/multilingual learners (EMLs) in inclusive classrooms. Findings show that although microteaching offered a practical space to experiment with translanguaging, the TCs struggled to enact it purposefully due to cognitive load, pedagogical uncertainty, and limited confidence. Their stated support for translanguaging thus appeared driven more by external expectations than by a fully developed stance. While some initially described the microteaching experience as 'awkward,' they later recognized it as a valuable opportunity for reflection and growth. Based on these findings, I argue for a stance-first approach in teacher education, in which translanguaging development begins with strengthening ideological clarity before expecting implementation. Purposefully sequenced, low-stakes enactments paired with guided video reflection can help novice teachers connect theory to practice, refine their instructional moves, and gradually develop a more intentional, asset-oriented pedagogy.
Oracy, or oral language skills, is important for literacy development, social-emotional development and learning in general. While oracy has gained attention in Dutch educational policy and in research internationally over the past years, how teachers actually conceptualize it in practice remains unclear. This study therefore explores how Dutch lower primary school teachers make sense of oracy in general, as well as in relation to teaching and assessment. We examined this through semi-structured interviews with 17 teachers. Our analyses show that while teachers generally view oracy as a multi-faceted skill set, conceptualizations between teachers vary. In their conceptualizations, teachers combine functional-communicative elements such as self-expression and collaboration with formal-compositional elements such as vocabulary and syntax. When it comes to oracy in relation to classroom practice, teachers focus on functional-communicative aspects and construct it as something that is implicitly facilitated. In the context of assessment, teachers foreground measurable aspects, reflecting a formal-compositional perspective. These ambiguities in teachers' conceptualizations in different contexts as well as the variations between teachers suggest that there is a need for clearer guidelines for teachers in relation to what oracy entails, but also potentially what it could look like in practice.
Writing centres in multilingual South African universities offer critical spaces for examining students' language use in academic writing development, where consultations often feature explicit metalinguistic talk across African languages, English, and Afrikaans. This qualitative case study explored how multilingual undergraduate students engaged in linguistic reasoning (defined as the analytic processes through which learners interrogate language knowledge) during writing centre consultations. Data comprised observations of 15 consultations, interviews with 12 students, and follow-up tutor interview with three tutors, analysed through an integrated framework of linguistic reasoning and translanguaging theory. Across 87 reasoning episodes in grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic domains, three patterns emerged: cross-linguistic comparisons clarified concepts such as nominalisation and tense; translanguaging served as a cognitive tool for testing interpretations; and reasoning extended to stance, politeness, and authorial positioning beyond mere correctness. The findings of this study position multilingual repertoires as epistemic resources for academic literacies, challenging deficit views. Writing centres should thus foreground multilingual linguistic reasoning to foster inclusive, responsive pedagogies.
Greek complementary schools (GCSs) in the UK are widely understood as institutions for maintaining Greek language and culture among the Greek Cypriot and Greek diasporic communities in Britain. However, recent migration and mixed marriages have significantly diversified their populations. This mixed-methods study provides the first sector-wide mapping of the languages spoken in UK GCS communities beyond Greek and English and of the national origins beyond Cyprus and Greece among pupils' families and teaching staff in 2024/2025. A school-level online questionnaire investigated pupils' family backgrounds and linguistic repertoires. The questionnaire was completed by 32 schools (51.6% of all UK GCSs), yielding quantitative estimates for 2,736 pupils (40.9% of sector enrolments). Follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 respondents representing nine schools. Survey findings show substantial heterogeneity. Pupils from mixed-heritage and non-Greek Cypriot/Greek backgrounds accounted for nearly half of enrolments on average. Parental origins spanned over 47 countries, with the UK and Albania most frequently reported, while 25 additional home languages were reported, most commonly Albanian. Interview data corroborate these patterns but suggest that diversity is often institutionally muted within Greekness-centred environments. Albanian heritage emerged as a salient site of tension, alongside examples of pupil agency and locally developed inclusive practices.
Interaction rituals are structured social encounters where participants share mutual focus and emotions. Although language classrooms are often rich with such rituals, little research has explored how these interaction rituals form and their roles in generating emotional energy. To address this gap, the present study investigated interaction rituals within the context of Chinese as an additional language learning. Drawing on classroom observations and teacher interviews across four proficiency levels, the findings reveal that teachers structured three key strategies to boost students' emotional energy through interaction rituals: (1) flexibly utilizing course design and routines, (2) leveraging shared knowledge and specific topics to build emotional connections, and (3) strategically reframing linguistic rituals to sustain emotional energy. Overall, the study highlights the importance of emotionally attuned pedagogy in the context of learning Chinese as an additional language, showing that fostering students' emotional energy through intentional interaction rituals not only enhances student learning and confidence but also deepens teacher responsiveness and strengthens classroom solidarity. This study pioneers the use of interaction rituals in language education, expanding emotion-based pedagogy by showing how emotions are socially constructed, shared, and sustained through classroom interactions.
This study quantitatively analyses the relationship between cognitive load, linguistic comprehension, and reasoning quality among students in L1 classrooms. Reasoning is understood as a multidimensional construct influenced by cognitive and disciplinary factors. Utilising data from 300 secondary school students, the study employs a Linguistic Reasoning Task Battery to evaluate reasoning quality in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is employed to examine the impact of cognitive load on reasoning quality, with linguistic comprehension functioning as a mediating variable and prior knowledge as a moderating variable. The results show that there are important connections between cognitive demands and linguistic awareness that affect how well students reason, which supports the idea of including explicit linguistic reflection in the classroom. The study emphasises the significance of linguistically enriched curricula that foster analytical thinking regarding language and provide practical guidance for teacher education and curriculum development.
This article presents the results of a qualitative elicitation study focused on the linguistic reasoning of Slovak 3rd graders. We examined students' linguistic reasoning in word-formation, particularly their ability to actively reflect on the meaning and structure of complex composite-suffixal adjective units. The research sample consisted of 26 3rd graders (8- to 9-year-old children) who had not yet been exposed to explicit knowledge of word-formation at school. The empirical data were collected via an individually administered research tool consisting of an expository text and open-ended oral tasks. The empirical data show that primary school students relied heavily on their implicit word-formation knowledge when reflecting on the meaning of a novel composite-suffixal word-form. They even recognised the constituents of the composite-suffixal structure. These findings contrast with the low frequency of these compounds in Slovak and in children's language production. We surmise that the difficulty of the language material provided students with the necessary stimulus for linguistic exploration. Research findings provide evidence-based solutions for school practices that support the implementation of the new L1 curriculum in Slovakia. For an international audience, the article may offer inspiration for designing metalinguistic activities with complex words for primary school students.
