Mediation through translanguaging: The linguistic negotiation of identities and policies

Over the last decade, translanguaging has been implemented and explored in a variety of learning contexts with cultural and linguistic diversity, including schools catering for indigenous, minority and immigrant populations as well as heritage community language schools. Studies have shown that it is an effective pedagogical practice in contexts “where the school language or the language-of-instruction is different from the languages of the learners” (Li 2018: 15). In its commitment to social justice and equality in education, on a theoretical plain, it deconstructs the socially and ideologically constructed divides between indigenous v. immigrant, majority v. minority, target v. mother-tongue languages (Li 2018: 15). Ultimately, it challenges the dichotomy between content and form maintained by institutions in the separation of school subjects or academic “knowledge” from linguistic practices through which knowledge is generated (García et al. 2021; Tarsoly and Ćalić 2022).
When adopted in in educational contexts, translanguaging “empowers both the
learner and the teacher, transforms the power relations, and focuses the process of teaching and learning on making meaning, enhancing experience, and developing identity (Garcia 2009; Creese and Blackledge 2015)” (Li 2018: 15). Chapter 8 explored the transformative impact of translanguaging on the various stakeholders involved in teaching and learning; Chapters 10 and Chapter 13 extend the scope of transformation beyond the classroom. This chapter focuses on the ways in which socially and institutionally constructed boundaries are interrogated due to a translanguaging stance in education.