Translanguaging for Transgressive Praxis: Promoting Critical Literacy in a MultiAge Bilingual Classroom

Abstract

bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4–6) classroom, with its two teachers—English language arts and French as a second language—coordinating their teaching and curriculum design to build meaningful bridges across content and languages to deepen critical understanding. The project was transgressive in its translanguaging practices that defy dominant monolingual hegemony, challenging traditional bilingual education practices in North America. It was also transgressive in its commitment to the Freirean view of literacy as reading (and writing) the word and the world. Adopting a literature-based curriculum and a critical literacy approach, the teachers engaged their students in exploring concepts recursively in both English and French to deconstruct social stereotypes, promote respect for diversity, and cultivate self-reflexivity regarding complicity in social injustice. Discourse analysis of ethnographic data shows how translanguaging created new possibilities and transgressive spaces for learners to adopt identities of competent bilingual users and critical agents of social change.