Holistic perspectives on complexities and implications of translanguaging in multilingual contexts: A commentary

As reflected in the title of the opening commentary for this special issue, holistic perspectives on the nature and potential of translanguaging emerged as the authors shared deep reflection of issues inherent in and growing from empirical research focussing on multilingual practices in EMI/CLIL-related classrooms. Translating global education goals such as ‘quality education for all’ into realities, involves a collective responsibility to promote pedagogies that address contextually sensitive challenges, cultural diversity and social inequalities. Multilingual classrooms embody spaces where more than one language is known, used, learned, encouraged or ‘forbidden,’ built on ideologies, power dynamics and marginalisation that impact on the way learners learn, and teachers teach. Moreover, throughout the last decade attitudes towards translanguaging have shifted significantly, leading to its increasing legitimization in multilingual educational contexts. Yet, the transformative potential of translanguaging in promoting equity and social justice requires further critical examination that situates classroom pedagogies in transparent sociopolitical and linguistic contexts. By emphasizing holistic (re)conceptualisations of the potential of translanguaging across multilingual studies in this issue, five distinct yet interrelated themes are evidenced. These are: translanguaging for equity and social justice; classroom interactions as translanguaging spaces; teacher awareness of the complexities of translanguaging; multimodality and translanguaging in assessment; and integrating technology-mediated translanguaging considering teacher competence and foregrounding student voice. The findings in this collection contribute significantly to a challenging futures-thinking research agenda serving as the springboard for further nuanced context-sensitive classroom-based studies unravelling practices and guiding principles along the pathway towards advancing quality multilingual education for all.