Multilingual authors ‘standing taller’ in arts-rich translanguaging spaces

Abstract

Viewed through the monolingual English-only lens characteristic of many Australian schools, plurilingual students are often positioned as being in deficit as language and literacy learners and struggle to find their way into a writer’s identity. The importance of creating a translanguaging space to support plurilingual learners is well established in the literature. In the current case study involving a class of Year 4 students from a Melbourne school who took part in a six-week arts-rich book making experience, we addressed a gap in the literature by making visible how elements of the ‘translanguaging space’ interact to support students to come to see themselves as resourceful multilingual ..