Voicing decolonial dialogues: Indigenous teachers’ translanguaging in the mainstream classroom

Abstract

This study examines minoritized indigenous teachers’ translanguaging in the mainstream classroom in Vietnam. Through a Bakhtinian lens of voice, transvocality, and decolonial dialogue, it explores how the teachers brought a minoritized language, namely Bahnar, into Vietnamese-based lessons to assist their minoritized indigenous students’ learning and classroom participation. The discussions are drawn on data obtained from interviews with indigenous teachers in suburban secondary schools. Through translanguaging between Vietnamese and Bahnar, the teachers exerted their transvocality where they orchestrated a dynamic chorus of diverse voices, which had various social effects. Translanguaging also enabled them to echo voices associated with their own and the indigenous students’ ethnic background, while maintaining voices linked with the Kinh majority students’ background, the school’s environment, and the wider society. Pedagogical and policy implications for applying dialogic teaching practices and facilitating social dialogues in relation to language, education, and ethnicity are then provided.