“And then the English will come”

Envisioning a Critical Multilingual Education for the ELT

classroom

"Y entonces vendrá el inglés"

Imaginando una educación multilingüe crítica para el aula de ELT

Eleni Louloudi

Bielefeld University

eleni.louloudi@uni-bielefeld.de

ABSTRACT

Critical literacies describe the need to understand language education as naturally grounded in

deconstruction of social injustice and, ultimately, also as an educational space where social

transformation finds its place. This (radically) deconstructive perspective inherently entails

seeing language education as a multilingual setting, where language hierarchies are dismantled

and translanguaging opportunities are embraced. For the ELT classroom, this also means seeing

the colonial truths of the English language as indispensable to its instruction.

Although the intersection of critical literacies and multilingual education is fundamental for a

critical lens to be adopted in ELT, there is little research that foregrounds their connection.

Consequently, this article explores theoretical and practice-oriented intersections of critical

literacies and translanguaging from an ELT perspective, drawing from ethnographic insights

collected in NYC. Emphasis is given in the development of a framework of a Critical Multilingual

Education, detailing on how this can inform school practice and help embrace emergent

multilinguals.

Keywords: critical multilingual education, translanguaging, critical literacies, ELT, language education

RESUMEN

Las alfabetizaciones críticas describen la necesidad de entender la educación lingüística como

algo naturalmente basado en la deconstrucción de la injusticia social y, en última instancia,

también como un espacio educativo donde la transformación social encuentra su lugar. Esta

perspectiva (radicalmente) deconstructiva implica intrínsecamente considerar la enseñanza de

idiomas como un entorno multilingüe en el que se desmantelan las jerarquías lingüísticas y se

aprovechan las oportunidades de aprendizaje de otros idiomas. Para el aula de ELT, esto también

significa ver las verdades coloniales de la lengua inglesa como indispensables para su enseñanza.

Aunque la intersección de las alfabetizaciones críticas y la educación multilingüe es

fundamental para adoptar una perspectiva crítica en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua

extranjera, existen pocas investigaciones que destaquen su conexión. En consecuencia, este

Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas (RNAEL) ISSN 1699-6569

Vol. 18 Núm. 36 (2024) doi: 10.26378/rnlael1836571

Recibido:20/12/2024 / Aprobado: 5/03/2024

Publicado bajo licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento Sin Obra Derivada 4.0 Internacional

artículo explora las intersecciones teóricas y prácticas de las alfabetizaciones críticas y el

translenguaje desde la perspectiva de la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, a partir

de datos etnográficos recogidos en Nueva York. Se hace hincapié en el desarrollo de un marco

de Educación Multilingüe Crítica, detallando cómo éste puede informar la práctica escolar y

ayudar a acoger a los multilingües emergentes.

Palabras clave: educación multilingüe crítica, translenguaje, alfabetización crítica, ELT, enseñanza de

idiomas

1. INTRODUCTION

Language education has long been moving from a field of language acquisition to an

educational environment that aims to understand language(s) holistically and educate

both teachers and students about the opportunities to understand language as inherently

connected to power and privilege as well as biases and oppression. This – more theorized

and less practiced – shift has certainly not come without several resistances: from book

banning, to prohibiting languages in school yards, to even denying students

communication (cf. Panagiotopoulou & Knappik, 2023).

Even in these challenging times, the field of critical education has been progressing

and more publications in various contexts (see Gerlach, 2020; Pandya et al., 2022; Selvi

& Kocaman, 2024) underline the importance of criticality in the whole continuum of

education: from kindergarten to university and beyond. One of the concepts that has

specifically addressed criticality as a stance for language education is that of critical

literacy (Luke, 2014; Yoon, 2016). As Janks argues, even “in a peaceful world without

the threat of global warming or conflict or war, where everyone has access to education,

health care, food and a dignified life” (2014, p. 32) there would still be a need for critical

literacy, – even more so, in a world that injustice is still daily business.

Even though critical literacies aim at the identification, analysis, and ultimate

transformation of all injustices, with an intersectional view towards privilege and

oppression, there is still little research that connects them to the necessary

“translanguaging turn” (García & Li, 2014): criticality cannot take form in education if

monolingual norms are still in position in classrooms around the world. Targeting this

need for linking these two –naturally interconnected– directions, this article will focus on

foregrounding a critical multilingual education, while detailing on the whats and hows

necessary for its application.

To do so, it will employ ethnographic insights collected in public schools in New York

City (NYC), which already work with forms of a critical multilingual perspective. Because

of the little research existing, the collection and analysis of such insights is indispensable

to the progression of the field. Finally, it will also make some implications on a potential

transfer to other educational contexts and, in particular, this of English Language

Teaching (ELT) in Germany1.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Defining “critical” and “multilingual“

Before taking upon the task to propose a framework of elements for a critical multilingual

education, it is necessary to first look into these concepts (critical and multilingual)

separately, not only because they have long been studied independently in the academic

discourse, but also so that their natural connection becomes apparent.

Already the intent to assign one definition to the Critical is a paradox: criticality is one

of these concepts that have been used widely to mean different things, mainly because

it is subject to situated knowledge (Louloudi, 2023). Even though sometimes vague, or

even too specific (see Pandya et al., 2022), it seems to take certain directions that are

not necessarily equivalent not yet antithetical. One of these, usually the most prominent

among scholars from the Anglosphere, refers to critical as questioning and analysis of

power, drawing from e.g. Freire, Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno (cf. Vasquez, 2017). This

definition is then connected to education in that it envisions all educational settings to be

places where sociopolitical deconstruction finds its place, biases and privileges are

identified and students and teachers work together towards societal transformation.

Another direction, usually still prominent in European settings, sees criticality as high-

order thinking and questioning (Luke, 2014), however not automatically and inevitably

connected neither to power relations nor to society critique and change. This direction

usually also sees criticality as a project of self-growth and self-voicing, focusing on giving

students the tools to rather transform their own lives and less society (Louloudi, 2023).

This contribution sees a critical (multilingual) perspective as grounded in questions of

power and societal transformation, adopting a rather radical lens. However, this

perspective should in no way indicate that such approaches do not in fact also aim at

individual growth. Nevertheless, the final goal of a critical education remains with taking

action towards collective justice (Luke, 2014; Louloudi, 2023).

In that sense, criticality becomes not only a question of what we teach in the classroom

(i.e. the sociopolitical topics and themes, such as racism, sexism, etc.) but also a question

of how we do so: the methodological steps we take to introduce, question, and dismantle

the problematic behind these topics. A pedagogical concept that addresses criticality in

this multifaceted way is this of critical literacy. As Luke has argued, critical literacy

describes “the use of the technologies of print and other media of communication to

analyse, critique, and transform the norms, rule systems, and practices governing the

social fields of institutions and everyday life” (2014, p. 21). This popular definition not

only ascribes a sociopolitical direction to critical literacy, but also already indicates its

holistic educational character: a critical deconstruction cannot (and should not) happen

randomly and irregularly, but within a (classroom) system of collective, stable change.

A holistic deconstruction is also connected to the rather new roles that both teachers

and students are called to take upon: it is not about the teacher instructing criticality, in

one given, knowledge-oriented way, but it is more about the teacher infusing criticality

(Chang-Bacon et al., 2022), taking a step back and becoming a learner themselves

(Louloudi & Schildhauer, forthcoming). This way, a critical perspective can be applied

within a non-critical system; even though critical literacies will indeed work best within a

systemic and systematic embracement of society critique, this absoluteness of an “all or

nothing” approach might scare teachers away, making criticality unsustainable for the

people who are the primary operators in its application it (see Louloudi &

Panagiotopoulou, i.p.).

All these elements of criticality are by some manner also linked to the way

multilingualism is defined. Multilingualism is also a term that has been widely used to

mean different things at times, evolved over the years and has been discussed as

connected to a variety of other concepts that are employed to describe the use of

language(s) in and out of educational settings. In language education, multilingualism is

usually linked to what Conteh and Meier (2014) have described as a multilingual turn,

which usually refers to the disruption of monolingual ideologies, recognizing at the same

time that teaching of languages is an active process of becoming a multilingual (García

& Kleyn, 2016). Under this turn, a variety of other concepts, closely related to

multilingualism, have flourished, with the most prominent being bilingualism (García,

2009), plurilingualism and metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010), surpassing other

popular (linguistic) terms such as code-switching, because they understand language

learning in a more holistic way. Interpretations of these concepts, however, have focused

on languaging as an additive process: from one language to two (bilingual), or to many

(multi/ plurilingual), emphasizing this way the system of one named language that can

be added to another. Even though scholars in the field (García & Li, 2014, Lau & Van

Viegen, 2020, Lin et al., 2020 etc.) further use the concepts in a critical, rather dynamic

way, they are still oftentimes used to mean the conjunction of n autonomous languages.

One of the concepts that aimed to deconstruct the notion of one given named language

is this of translanguaging (García & Li, 2014). Translanguaging “refers to the deployment

of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire, which does not in any way correspond to the

socially and politically defined boundaries of named languages” (García & Kleyn, 2016,

p. 14). This definition already indicates the fundamental difference in perspective that

translanguaging poses in comparison to other terms: it aims to dismantle societal norms

and, in that, also reconstruct other, more inclusive ones. This is what positions

translanguaging within critical educational theory: its open quest for social justice in the

classroom (see García et al., 2017).

2.2 Reconstructing the critical and the multilingual connection for English

Language Teaching

As mentioned before, the elemental connection of critical and multilingual education lies

in their goal to dismantle problematic, normative structures and help students and

teachers take action towards social justice in and out of the classroom. This connection

is rather natural and apparent; however, for them to coexist and work simultaneously in

the language classroom, their link needs to become intentional and be practiced as such:

the critical cannot be critical without the multilingual and the multilingual does not have

the same effect without being intentionally critical.

In more detail, critical education cannot really be critical without considering the

language hierarchies that uphold and perpetuate biases through and about languaging.

Specifically for ELT, this starts with what Seltzer and de los Ríos have noted as “put[ing]

English itself in quotation marks” (2018, p. 50), or in other words, questioning not only

the purposes of ELT but the very foundation of the English language. Such questions

include (but are not limited to): which English, whose English, why English, or English by

whom? All these questions do not only apply in environments where ELT is taught as the

(main) language of the system (e.g. in the US, in Canada, or in Australia), but expressly

apply to settings where English is taught as an additional (sometimes still foreign)

language (e.g. in Germany or in Finland).

There are indeed specific particularities that arise when considering a critical

multilingual lens for the English instruction, because of the explicit status of the English

language as a global language (Galloway & Rose, 2015), a world language (Kachru,

1992), or a Lingua Franca (Jenkins, 2006). In their chapter, Tian et al. (2020) present

three main arguments that finely summarize the special case of English when considered

from a (critical) translanguaging perspective: 1) going from monolithic English to the act

of English-ing, by shifting the focus from the acquisition of a named language to how

people use it in “in real-life communicative contexts” (ibid.), which not only includes the

different linguistic forms that arise, but also the social values, attitudes and beliefs

expressed when practicing languaging; 2) this is directly connected to dismantling the

myth of the native speaker: one of the arguments that has been long deconstructed in

theory (see from Coulmas, 1981 to Macedo, 2019 and Pennycook, 2021), yet still creeps

into policies, curricula and classroom practices, specifically in additional language settings

(see Davydova, 2020; Zehne, 2022). Deconstructing native speakerism does not only

refer to shifting away from the native/non-native dichotomy, but requires making the

realization of how an English-speaking world was even constructed in the first place part

of our classroom practices (cf. García, 2019, p. 3) such questioning also demands that

we understand that English cannot be taught – cognitively and metacognitively – in

English-only settings that uphold these problematic, normative linguistic narratives: the

teaching of English should perceive all learners as emergent multilinguals “who are aware

of and sensitive to the context and could perform fluid, dynamic, and complex language

practices with creativity and criticality to achieve their expressive and communicative

needs” (Tian et al., 2020, p. 10).

All these three elements position critical multilingual education within decolonial

action: the teaching of English cannot be separated from the language’s history and

current status, while also embracing the opportunity to be used as “a third space”

(Bhabha, 1996) that embraces linguistic and sociopolitical ambiguities. In other words,

this would require students understanding “how language is used and, importantly, how

language can be used against them” (Alim, 2005, p. 28).

In ELT, there are already concepts that point to the interconnection of critical literacies

and multilingual practices, as defined above. Seltzer and de los Ríos (2018, p. 50)

propose a critical translingual approach that concentrates on questioning English as a

“teachable subject”, while moving to centering students’ linguistic diversity in the

classroom, drawing from critical sociolinguistics and raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa,

2015). This shift necessitates seeing students as racialized speakers and calls teachers

to question their own privileges and biases in regard to the ways they understand

languaging.

Lau’s (2020) study on the intersections of translanguaging and critical bi-literacies

points to similar directions. When referring to translanguaging, Lau speaks of a

“resemiotization of critical learning” (2020, p. 117), not only because it helps reground

the specific sociolinguistic context in which critical learning takes place, but also because

no deconstruction of power can occur without perceiving the very language(s) we speak

as the mediator of this deconstruction; as she argues, “language is a mediator, rather

than a mere conveyor, of thoughts through which we form, transform, create, remember,

talk and write about our thoughts and ideas” (2020, p. 118). In other words, this would

mean, for example, that critical literacies cannot lead to society critique if practiced within

English-only environments, which reinforce the dominant linguistic ideologies in place.

Chang-Bacon et al. (2022) also expand on the role of translanguaging in critical

literacies and vice versa. Drawing from fundamental characteristics of critical learning,

i.e. the right of students to learn in environments that reflect their realities, they mention

that accordingly, critical literacies should help create holistic settings that center the

experiences of multilingual students, specifically with respect to discrimination, “involving

nationalism, racism, and other forms of intolerance” (2022, p. 44). In that, they (as well

as Seltzer & de los Ríos, 2018 and Lau, 2020) emphasize the role of the teacher as one

of the most important figures in adopting and applying such a perspective.

3. METHODOLOGY

To better understand how a critical multilingual perspective can work in the classroom,

a deeper exploration of settings that already work within the principles of critical theory

is needed. Because criticality is rarely a straightforward goal of educational policies

around the world (see Louloudi, 2023), it is rather the teachers’ choice and personal

engagement that makes these practices visible (König & Louloudi, forthcoming). As

Chang-Bacon et al. also argue, “it is most often teachers who create space for critical

engagement in their classrooms” (2022, p. 45). Even though the study of such

classrooms is of uttermost importance for the progression of the field, the access to these

environments is very difficult, not only because of practical issues (e.g. interest of the

teacher), but also because it can lead to very normative conclusions of the researcher

(i.e. is this successful, is this right or wrong), if the situatedness of critical learning is not

taken into consideration (cf. Pennycook, 2021). However, across the globe, there do exist

specific schools whose work is dedicated to (interpretations of) critical learning already

through their school policies and curricula, usually referred to as inclusive, international,

or multilingual schools. The study of these schools can prove to be very fruitful not only

as a means of good practice but also because the setting of the school is usually more

accessible.

This is the frame of this study project as well: the investigation and understanding of

settings that already work within some fabric of critical learning. Because of the central

point of the study being on a holistic conception of the social phenomena that construct

criticality, a focused ethnography was selected as the method to look into the “actions,

interactions and social situations” (Knoblauch, 2005, online) related to the ways selected

inclusive or multilingual schools in New York City understand and interpret critical

multilingualism. More specifically, emphasis was put on approaching the field with “an

ethnographic sensibility” to help “remain open to the idea that [the] object of study is

not just a ‘case’ to examine in relation to theories we hold independently, but something

that tells us more than we knew to ask” (Longo & Zacka, 2019, p. 1067).

This ultimately meant that focused ethnography was approached as a frame of mind

(Corbett, 2022) to help investigate critical multilingualism in the specific (international,

national, local and communal) context of every school (cf. Blommaert, 2013). In

particular, the study is based on short-term visits to three public schools (from primary

to high school level), during which field observations were done as well as in-situ

conversations with the teachers and collection of artifacts (materials, photographs,

student work). All selected schools follow, by curriculum, a multilingual pedagogy, with

focus on translanguaging (after García 2009), which is further connected to a culturally

responsive pedagogy.

More specifically, three NYC public schools with multilingual settings were visited and

the field was explored on the basis of four in-situ conversations with teachers and

principals, five classroom observations, collection of ethnographic artifacts (e.g. school

materials or students’ products) and an ethnographic researcher’s journal. The in-situ

conversations were 1,5-hour gatherings with multiple stakeholders within the respective

school: principals, head teachers, curriculum managers and counselors. They were all in

multiple stages in their educational paths: from early career to final stages. These groups

usually consisted of five to eight facilitators and took place both before and after the

observations. For clarity, in the results section, they will be referred to as teachers, even

though each has several educational roles in their respective school.

The classroom observations varied from 15 minutes to one hour. Emphasis was put in

observing multiple educational levels: from early primary school classes to high school,

to specifically target the continuum of possible critical perspectives. Access was provided

by a key person to the field, who arranged for our research team to see everyday

practice.

The ethnographic insights collected were then analysed in line with a Grounded Theory

lens (after Charmaz, 2014). In particular, in an initial coding phase, first directions and

connections regarding criticality were identified. In the focused coding phase, these

formed more central categories, which will be presented in the following sequence. These

will focus not only on what a critical multilingual perspective is as observed in the different

environments (see Louloudi & Panagiotopoulou, i. p.), but rather on the prerequisites –

the hows, the vital requirements needed for such a perspective to flourish, as described

by the teachers and seen in their practices.

4. RESULTS - GROUNDING A CRITICAL MULTILINGUAL FRAMEWORK OF

PRACTICE – THE WHATS AND HOWS FROM THE FIELD

4.1 Seeing Critical and multilingual as naturally connected

When addressing the intersections of critical and multilingual learning, teachers

positioned themselves very clearly: “breaking societal norms starts with breaking

linguistic ones” (in-situ conversation with teachers, public primary school in NYC).

Already from this short quote, the teacher here describes the foundation of a critical

multilingual perspective: one cannot identify, address, and deconstruct societal norms,

if linguistic ones are still held in place. This already makes the multilingual a prerequisite

of the critical: other sociopolitical power relations will not be dismantled in classrooms

where linguistic barriers still exist. This reflects fundamental understandings of

translanguaging as a pedagogy that invites a critical stance holistically (cf. Tian & King,

2023) and not in bits and pieces: this requires teachers, as described in the quote above,

to see language – and literacy – as grounded in power dynamics (Fairclough, 2001;

Janks, 2010) and, consequently, also multilingual education as “tied to the political power

of the state or to the people who speak the different languages” (García & Lin, 2016, p.

5).

When asked to elaborate on this, the teacher continued: “Translanguaging helps us

give space to the students to be their whole selves in the classroom. If this is given, then

the English will come”. This lens already takes a step forward: it is not about starting

with the linguistic norms, but it is also about starting with the speakers themselves, while

centering their holistic self in the classroom. The same position is expressed by de los

Ríos and Seltzer (2017), who explain that starting with speakers means seeing the

“creative and critical enactment of [students‘] holistic repertoire” (2017, p. 57) and not

separating between/among the languages as first/second, or additional/native. The

teacher here also adds the dimension of acquiring English as an additional language being

secondary, but not necessarily of secondary importance; “the English will come” in this

case means that only when the students feel holistically represented in the classroom,

the cognitive acquisition of the language will follow. Here, again, the starting point is

different: the end goal is still “the coming of English”, but it does require students to be

represented first. This positions translanguaging at the core of critical learning:

understanding, questioning, and working towards representation of all students,

specifically the minoritized (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Lau et al., 2022). Such practices require

teachers to have a clear position towards their teaching, a critical multilingual stance,

and not see criticality as a quick fix, a single learning incident, i.e. as a simple scaffolding

technique (Vasquez, 2004).

4.2. Focusing on the Sociopolitical

When addressing their lessons as connected to criticality, teachers often talked about

centering a social justice perspective. This was either addressed methodologically, for

example, by creating student-centered settings, or it was considered from a content-

related point of view, i.e. by tackling social justice topics, such as race, gender, and class.

With regard to the latter, teaches criticized (the system) themselves, arguing that this is

also rather new to them, and they did not “address it five years ago”. Even though a

‘new thing’, their lens was quite clear: sociopolitical topics should reflect the biographies

of the children in the classroom, which is an elemental characteristic of critical learning

(Lewison et al., 2002; Yoon, 2015; García et al., 2017). Considering that all schools

observed have a focus on welcoming students with an immigration background, the

emphasis of centering biographies should also reflect these experiences of immigration.

Having said that, social justice for the teachers meant having materials that reflect the

real-life stories of their students in an authentic way: authenticity in this case was

translated to having linguistically diverse books (e.g. in Spanish or in Chinese), but also

a great variety of topics, such as stories about border-crossing, or immigration stories in

general, stories about women as leaders, body diversity, Black Lives Matter, segregation,

religion, class and climate – mostly represented by picturebooks in the lower grades and

by novels in the upper grades. This was also to be seen through the observations: these

materials were not only very prominently presented in the classrooms, but the

classrooms themselves were vehicles of social justice topics. The two pictures below,

from two different schools, negotiate this link: social justice as a topic (racism, linguistic

representation), but also through translanguaging:

Figure 1. Students’ products

These two pictures illustrate this connection between critical learning and

translanguaging: the one seems to be a prerequisite of the other: one cannot critically

discuss matters such as racism without being allowed to do so in their holistic linguistic

repertoire, while translanguaging can only work when thought and practiced as a

pedagogy “for minoritized students to navigate the ‘codes of power’” (Lau et al., 2022,

p. 383) and not as a random incident (see also Seltzer, 2023).

4.3. Understanding criticality as bound to the community

Part of understanding and embracing students’ biographies, is the involvement and

fostering of the local communities to which students belong. This point was made by the

teachers, but not as a one-way street: not only is the school classroom supposed to

reflect the particular sociocultural matters of the local community, but, for critical

learning to be made possible, the school itself should “take care of the community too”

(in-situ conversation with teachers, public primary school in NYC). Taking care of the

community meant for the teachers (and in particular the principal) that they make sure

that, first and foremost, the basic needs of the students are being met: if the basics are

not covered, the possibilities to engage in any type of critical learning are very low. Next

to that, caring also meant understanding the community as “a classroom every day”

(Aitken & Robinson, 2020, p. 78). In that, teachers talked about parents being members

of study groups and actively involved in their children’s learning. Parental and community

involvement is an essential part of both critical literacy and translanguaging pedagogies.

This negotiates criticality as a continuum practice, where not only teachers, but all

community members are “mediators of language and culture, and agents of change and

education reform” (Van Viegen & Lau, 2020, p. 327). However, the focus does not only

lie with community matters being reflecting in everyday learning, but also with the

necessity of school nurturing the well-being of the families, so that the students can

indeed receive the best chance to understand, analyse and then transform their own

communities. As Tupas and Martin argue, the most successful ways to engage in a

(critical) multilingual perspective “have been those which empower local people to decide

on the social development needs of their communities” (2017, p. 256).

4.4 Developing a critical multilingual stance through teacher collaboration

To be able to take into consideration all the above-mentioned points, teachers talked

about the importance of a clear strategy for the school: a critical multilingual lens can

only function as a stance towards education; practically, this requires a comprehensive

whole-school approach, which is only possible through a constant teacher collaboration.

During the visits, this point was one of the most obvious ones to observe: teachers sat

together and exchanged ideas as part of their everyday life. As the principals told us

later, teacher collaboration is “the main focus of the schools” (in-situ conversation with

teachers, public primary school in NYC). In that, emphasis is given to the teachers’ own

identity and what they bring to the classroom, a point that is fundamental in any type of

critical learning: this means not only disrupting traditional roles and allowing teachers to

be vulnerable in the ways they express their own (language) identity together with their

students (König & Louloudi, forthcoming), but also making sure that they “disrupt their

own learning experiences, often in immersion classrooms where only the target language

is said to be used” (García, 2023, p. xx). This critical disruption is only possible when

teachers feel to be “a part of the bigger puzzle” (in-situ conversation with teachers, public

primary school in NYC), and not as single fighters in this battle against injustice.

Having a strong collaboration among all members of the school allows for students to

be taught in an environment of critical multilingual stability, where norms are continually

deconstructed. This is even extended when the cooperation is furthered by university

researchers. Shepard-Carey and Tian make a strong case for the importance of teacher-

research collaboration in translanguaging pedagogies, arguing that it “may advance

theory and practice and build classroom environments that sustain translanguaging

pedagogies as everyday practice and embrace the linguistic realities of multilingual

students” (2023, p. 3). This is mainly because such coexisting allows for a shared feeling

of discomfort to take over and intensify the learning experience (Louloudi, 2023):

teachers and researchers juntos learn to let go of the preconceptions of what criticality

should look like and embrace the situatedness of the respective classroom.

4.5 Advocating for policy reform

Teaching towards the goals of social justice from a critical multilingual perspective can

oftentimes be overwhelming for schools that still need to meet their annual goals and

prepare the students for standardised tests. Within a system that only supports

traditional forms of assessment and success is defined by grades, teaching social justice

becomes an ‘extra thing’ that depends on the personal interests and additional

involvement of all parties. As García puts it, “teachers are often constrained by school

policies and curricula” (2023: p. xvii). This was one of the major points that the teachers

we visited brought up as a requirement for adopting a critical multilingual perspective –

as one of the principals put it “the important part is that teachers are not afraid” (in-situ

conversation with teachers, public primary school in NYC). For teachers not to be afraid,

there needs to be a system that reinforces and preserves the goals of social justice. Even

though studies show that teachers are indeed the primary actors in embracing critical

multilingual practices (Rosiers et al., 2018; Louloudi, 2023), without advocating for a

policy reform, we run the risk of putting such a demanding task to the shoulders of the

individual teacher – and that, without even providing them with the proper education to

do so. The ultimate goal of any critical endeavor should still be to “transform the norms,

rule systems, and practices governing the social fields of institutions and everyday life”

(Luke, 2014, p. 21) and with that, also the very policies that uphold unjust narratives

and deny students their right to full communication, participation and representation.

4.6 Embracing hope and joy

While all of the above-mentioned elements of critical multilingual education rather focus

on the disruption of well-established societal norms, and the discomfort that this struggle

can cause to all parties involved, the teachers in this study focused on embracing

criticality as a product of joy. This was expressed in various ways: in the conversations,

where we were told that “for the learning to stick, kids need to have fun while breaking

norms” (in-situ conversation with teachers, public primary school in NYC), but also in the

overall environment of the schools that transformed important sociopolitical topics to

creative projects through i.e. colorful posters or students’ drawings (see Figure 2 and 3).

The two images taken in two different schools are examples of this joyful creativity:

Figure 2. Students’ products, Loving Earth

Figure 3. Students’ signs on the classroom door

In both pictures, respect is the underlying topic of discussion – the one related to students

having agency in their own classroom and the other one in seeing love as related to

respecting the earth – both are translanguaging products (English, Spanish, Sign

Language) that were created by the students and are displayed in the classroom. These

two elements – love and agency – are the underlying link between joy and criticality: if

students are not taught that there is joy at the end of the tunnel, “the learning won’t

stick” (in-situ conversation with teachers, public primary school in NYC). This negotiates

the concept of radical hope (Heller & McElhinny, 2017), where joy is not employed to

enforce “bland positivity and admiration for the way things are” (Pennycook, 2021, p. 4),

but to underline that resistance is indeed resistance is as much “an action of struggle, as

one of joy and healing” (Louloudi & Panagiotopoulou, i.p.).

5. DISCUSSION. AND NOW WHAT? DRAWING ON IMPLICATIONS FOR THE

GERMAN CONTEXT

All these elements of a critical multilingual education as described before result from a

situated, context-specific understanding of criticality that applies to the environments

visited: three public schools in NYC with a great focus on these concepts. Even though

situated and not directly to be applied to any other context as such (see Louloudi, 2023;

Pennycook, 2021), one can certainly draw points for potential transfer. The following

paragraphs will try to draw on the lessons learned for the German ELT context, keeping

in mind the particularities of the system in which we operate.

This is already the first point to be made: the system. The system itself plays a very

important role in the ways critical multilingual perspectives can find space and flourish;

educational policy and (English) curricula in Germany do focus substantially in language

skill acquisition and any form of a critical endeavour (e.g. in the English curriculum, see

Matz, 2020), still target the final goal of acquiring English, seeing criticality as a short-

term addition, or as some type of scaffolding (see Gerlach, 2020). For a critical

multilingual perspective to be adopted, the system needs to shift the main focus of

education –and not only ELT– to developing engaged, democratic citizens. For ELT, this

would mean moving from the question are they learning English to questions such as

why are they learning English, whose English are they learning, how is this English

contributing to a more just society, how are the students’ (sociolinguistic) identities a

part of this English?

These questions already point to a direction that sees ELT not only as a Lingua Franca

(Jenkins, 2006), but as a medium of deconstruction and decolonisation itself (Vaish,

2005), while also understanding its history as a language of colonisation (see Macedo,

2018). In that sense, English is indeed “a site of competing (and contradictory)

ideologies” (Canagarajah, 2000, p. 130) that need to be honoured in the classroom in

their entirety. To be able to do so in the German ELT, it is not enough to move away

from colonial perspectives in our materials (e.g. the textbooks) or in our literary canon,

but we need to disrupt monolingual ideologies (i.e. English-only policies) that keep these

colonial truths in place. This means embracing a multilingual policy that is “tied to [the]

local and regional struggles” (Luke, 2005, p. xv) of our students. Consequently,

multilingualism for the German ELT context means embracing the holistic linguistic

repertoire that all speakers bring with them to the classroom, including their family

languages (see Panagiotopoulou & Uçan, 2023).

Even though publications in the field (Schmid & Schmidt, 2017; Bonnet & Siemund,

2018) point to the direction of multilingualism as a necessity for the English classroom,

there is still very little being done in the actual classrooms. This goes beyond the

instruction of English, to all the other languages that are taught within the “foreign

language” paradigm, i.e. also Spanish. García García and Reiman, for instance, argue

that multilingualism cannot be thought as a ‘networking goal’ among the different

subjects, but needs to address the needs of multilingual speakers (2020, p. 12). As they

continue, this does not only refer to the students, but also to the multilingual teachers

and their repertoire.

To be able to adopt such a holistic lens, and see change in the classroom, a critical

multilingual perspective needs to be fostered from the very beginning of the school

continuum. In that, teacher education plays an indispensable role; as Hsieh and Cridland-

Hughes (2022) argue.

Using preservice teacher education to engage the question of access and denial of

marginalized identities in the official curriculum, and of simultaneous welcoming and

unwelcoming structures within a particular school context, is central to preparing

teachers to make decisions in real classrooms that hold space for all. For our context,

this means deconstructing the English-only policies university departments like to adopt

and embracing our student teachers’ linguistic repertoire from the beginning of their

studies – however, not from a scaffolding point of view, but from a holistic critical

perspective towards the education we offer: critical multilingual education means working

towards the goals of social justice in and outside of the classroom.

6. CONCLUSION

This article tried to detail on the elements of a critical multilingual education both from a

theoretical and an empirical perspective. In doing so, prominent academic work in the

field (e.g. Setlzer & de los Ríos, 2018; García, 2020; Lau, 2020; Lau et al., 2022) was

taken into consideration and combined with an empirical lens through insights collected

in public NYC schools that already work with different forms of critical multilingual

learning. The results describe that for such a lens to work, a holistic interconnection of

critical and multilingual is necessary, which can find its place in the classroom in various

ways: 1) by centering sociopolitical issues that reflect the students’ biographies, while

embracing students’ holistic linguistic repertoire; 2) by identifying points of

communication with the students’ communities and including those into the everyday

learning; 3) by supporting and intensifying teachers’ collaboration, but at the same time,

also advocating for a policy reform, when the system itself holds problematic structures

(e.g. English-only instruction) into position and 4) by nurturing joy and (radical) hope.

All these elements can show good potential to be adopted and adapted in other

educational contexts, such as the German ELT context, as long as the situated

particularities of these are being taken into consideration. The main requirement for a

systematic adoption of a critical multilingual perspective is to disrupt the normative

structures that the system itself keeps in place. However, this is a long-term, rigorous

and exhaustive task that, if seen and treated as an all-or-nothing approach, will result in

overwhelm, hopelessness and, consequently, little action.

Criticality can, and should, still be thought as a stance we can adopt step-by-step: one

little disruption at a time, one better material, one move forward. The more we walk

towards it, the easier it will get.

NOTAS / NOTES

1 Germany’s ELT context is being discussed as my own field of action. It is important to note that in the Ger-

man context, English is being taught as a “foreign” [sic] or additional language and is not directly comparable

to contexts where English is the primary language of instruction or of the system. However, many implica-

tions can be drawn from these environments, as seen in this article. These implications are not only relevant

to the German context, but also to other European settings that treat the instruction of English in a similar

way, i.e. Finland.

2 Considering the abovementioned definitions, the term that best describes the endeavor of this project is

this of a critical translingual education, and not multilingual: even though the focus in fact on

translanguaging, I still feel the need to stay within the term of multilingual education, because it still better

describes the field in which we operate. As García & Lin (2016) also argue: “by upholding the terms “bilingual”

and “multilingual” despite our own heteroglossic theoretical lens, we recognize the very real and material

effect of named languages on people“.

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