Embedding social justice and sustainability perspectives in language teaching

Abstract

Globalisation and widespread migration have led to culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse classrooms, where children are often schooled in a language different from their home language. Monolinguistic approaches to education reproduce coercive power relations in society and neglect the rich linguistic repertoire of children from indigenous, marginalised and minority communities. A deficit view of minority language students’ linguistic skills devalues their linguistic identity, and contributes to academic underachievement, and attrition in home languages. This chapter explores how minority language students’ home languages can be activated as valuable academic capital in language classrooms, as a means of promoting social justice and enhancing language learning for all students. Drawing on Cummins’ (2015) emancipatory framework for intercultural education in multilingual classrooms, as well as the principle of interdependence across languages (Cummins, 2005), this chapter presents a theoretical rationale for the inclusion of children’s home languages in school, along with practical exemplars as to how a plurilingual approach to language teaching may be facilitated in primary classrooms. A plurilingual classroom which recognises, respects and includes all languages has the potential to enrich the personal, academic and cultural learning experiences of all students and challenge inequitable linguistic power relations in wider society.