Translanguaging in the context of mainstream multilingual education

Abstract

In the context of multilingual education, translanguaging has been put forward as a means of including several languages in education. However, teachers often assess translanguaging-based approaches as being too vague and idealist. This study discusses data from two settings (Luxembourg and Netherlands) in which teachers working in design-based projects operationalised the concept of translanguaging in order to include both migrant and minority languages in mainstream education. Examples from each dataset will be discussed in order to show the different functions of translanguaging in the two settings. Analyses of classroom transcripts provide insights into how official translanguaging can be used as pedagogical strategy to acknowledge migrant languages, achieve less language separation in traditional immersion models and to increase content understanding. Based on teachers’ own reflection on their use of translanguaging and on iterative interpretation of excerpts of the data, the study provides an overview of the functional use of different languages within moments of official translanguaging.