Translanguaging for Critical Bi-Literacy: English and French Teachers’ Collaboration in Transgressive Pedagogy

Abstract

Based on the framework of plurilingualism and pluriliteracies, this chapter showcases two teachers’ collaborative efforts in creating a dynamic bilingual environment in their Grades 4–6 multiage classroom in a Québec English elementary. Through strategic cross- language and curricular connections between English Language Arts and French Second Language, the two teachers read children’s stories with their students in the two languages on topics connected to social justice and equity to promote students’ critical biliteracy development and to foster an appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Elaborating on some important plurilingual practices, this chapter explores particularly the teachers’ and the children’s creative use of translanguaging and resemiotization from one lingual and/or modal way of meaning-making to another in their collaborative critical inquiry into the topic of racism and slavery. These hybrid literacy practices facilitated and reconfigured their collective and individual knowledge construction, as well as their instantiation of critical biliteracy learning and identity negotiation. The study demonstrates new possibilities for dynamic and integrated plurilingual learning that goes beyond surface language functions to meaningful cross-language connections, conceptual coherence and clarity as well as depth of understanding.