Translingual Pedagogies in the Global South: Review of Classroom Practices and Interventions

Multilingual practices, such as code-switching or translanguaging, have gained scholarly attention in educational contexts in the Global South. These multilingual practices, although naturally occurring in other contexts, are usually disallowed in classrooms where the language of instruction is commonly a national or foreign language. In Africa in particular, English is visibly prominent as a language of education and as a marker of upward social mobility. Many researchers are questioning these policies that favour either dominant national or foreign languages over local languages in classrooms. As a result, although some scholars claim that code-switching and translingual practices have always been common in the African continent (and more generally in the southern hemisphere), intentional and spontaneous translanguaging projects that promote the use of multiple languages as a pedagogical tool are now appearing in the Global South. Against this background, the present chapter aims to present a review of translanguaging pedagogies by looking at studies that closely examine or introduce translingual practices in classroom contexts as a pedagogical resource. The results highlight methodological, theoretical and practical issues revealed in the review.