Plurilingualism and language and literacy education

In this paper, we discuss the place of plurilingualism in Language and Literacy Education. The article problematises English-only, monolingual-centric assumptions upon which much of Australia’s current literacy education policy discourse has been based, to instead advance pluriliteracies as an alternate, more generative lens through which to view literacy learners, literacy learning, and literacy capabilities. The paper begins with tensions inherent in how policy “imagines” learners in Australian schools, and the problem of imposing English-only, monolingual-centric notions of literacy when multilingualism is increasingly more the norm than the exception in many mainstream Australian classrooms. We consider how a pluriliteracy perspective on literacy education offers a more appropriate approach to addressing learners’ developmental literacy needs, with particular attention to students’ identity and agency. Finally, we consider effective implementation of plurilingual approaches to language and learning, with a focus on the intersection of ideology, practice, and policy.

ways celebrating this diversity, positioning it as an asset. Rizvi et al.'s (2016) report on Australia's "diasporic advantage", for example, sought to identify how Australia could "utilise all available resources to manage regional opportunities and risks for growth and stability" (ACOLA, 2019). Yet recognition of this diversity-and its advantages-dissipates when policy pivots to literacy education, especially for what it means to become and be literate in the context of contemporary Australian school systems. The terms of reference for the Australian Literacy Education taskforce outlined in the introduction of this Special Issue with its emphasis on literacy through phonics, for example, narrowly and reductively perpetuate a monolingual orientation to literacy in which English is presumed to be the only linguistic resource that students bring to literacy learning as the basis to further expand those skills.
This article problematises these English-only, monolingual-centric assumptions upon which much of Australia's current literacy education policy discourse has been based, to instead advance pluriliteracies as an alternate, more generative lens through which to conceive of and understand literacy learners, literacy learning, and literacy capabilities. In doing so, the paper specifically calls out the glaring omission in current literacy education policy with respect to the literacy learning needs, and capabilities, of students with linguistic resources other than English: crudely put, "non" English-monolinguals. Such a descriptor betrays the complex sociolinguistic profile of students comprising the Australian education space, though. It also includes, for example, many "English monolinguals" learning other languages alongside English, as well as learners who speak dialects and other varieties of non-"standard" Australian English, 1 particularly from Indigenous Australian backgrounds. In all cases, missed yet significant opportunities exist to capitalise on the intersections between these multiple linguistic resources with the potential to offer a more powerful, expansive approach to literacy and literacy learning.
The paper comprises three main parts. The first begins by exposing the tension between rhetoric and reality in terms of who policy "imagines" learners in Australian schools to be, with demographic data now suggesting that multilingualism is increasingly more the norm than the exception in many mainstream Australian classrooms-especially within schools identified on standardised benchmarks of literacy attainment, such as NAPLAN, as being some of the most disadvantaged in the nation. It argues the problems of imposing Englishonly, monolingual-centric notions of literacy on these learners. The second section then considers how a pluriliteracies perspective on literacy education offers a more appropriate approach to addressing these learners' developmental literacy needs. We consider pedagogical approaches realised in emerging, contemporary research, and turn to Australian research to highlight the affordances of a plurilingual approach to teaching and learning that are more reflective of and adapted to Australia's changing context, with particular attention to student identity, and teacher and student agency. We briefly consider how a pluralist approach is constructing literacies in new ways and beginning to expand knowledge for all students. The final part presents points of consideration for effective implementation of plurilingual approaches to language and learning, with a focus on the intersection of ideology, practice, and policy. untapped linguistic potential Literacy is positioned in the Australian Curriculum in two ways. First, as a General Capability involving the "use [of] language confidently for learning and communicating in and out of school and for participating effectively in society" (ACARA, n.d.-a). However, as Salter and Maxwell (2016, p. 296) explain, general capabilities in the context of the Australian Curriculum are "elements […] incorporated into key learning area content where teachers deem them to be relevant". They therefore occupy a precarious position, relying on subject area specialists to go beyond their immediate area of expertise to assume responsibility for actualising them as part of the "taught" curriculum. They risk being overlooked, or underplayed, when competing alongside other priorities in a curriculum that even ACARA concedes as "content-heavy and prescriptive" (2018, p. 47), with Lingard and McGregor (2014, p. 105) cautioning that "embedding the general capabilities […] may falter under the complexity of the task for many teachers".
Perhaps for this reason, and the high-stakes role it has assumed as a proxy for benchmarking educational attainment in general (e.g. the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)), literacy also appears within the Australian Curriculum as an explicit strand attached to a "named" learning domain (unlike many of the other General Capabilities, such as Ethical Understanding or Critical and Creative Thinking): English. The Victorian Curriculum-a state-based adaptation of the Australian Curriculum for Victorian schools-removes any ambiguity about who might be responsible for teaching literacy even further, eliminating it completely from its list of "capabilities" (the Victorian equivalent of the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities), instead placing literacy squarely in the remit of English as one of three key strands that comprise the framework for the Learning Area, along with language and literature.
This reflects McIntosh et al.'s (2012, p. 461, emphasis in original) findings that not only are the concepts of "language" and "literacy" often conflated within Australian educational discourse, but "the linguistic hegemony of the dominant national language is evident in the fact that language and SAE [Standard Australian English] are seen as one and the same entity": This assumption is even expanded in some documents, to the extent that (SAE) language is seemingly viewed as virtually synonymous with (English) literacy […] Language is often subsumed within an overly generalized educational discourse of literacy across state and, particularly, national education agendas, policies and curricular networks.
Similarly, Dixon and Angelo (2014) draw on Clyne's (2005) critique of Australia's "monolingual mindset", and Siegel's (2010) problematisation of the "monoglot ideology", to explain what they found to be "generic language blindness" (p. 220) in their study of Australian school language data; that is, the presumption of monolingualism as the default, natural, or even preferred condition for how things are, or should be, rendering irrelevant the presence, impact, or potential of additional language resources within those settings (pp. 220-221).
The consequence of this English-only, monolingual-centric orientation to literacy means, as Macqueen et al. (2019, p. 266) found with respect to NAPLAN for example, that "meaningful participation […] depends critically on proficiency in Standard Australian English (SAE) as a first language". Similarly, as Cross (2009) argues, Literacy for All (DEETYA, 1998), the policy that superseded Australia's Language (DEET, 1991) and subsumed language into literacy in the process, laid the foundations for NAPLAN through the introduction of national benchmarking. This rendered previously visible, explicit discussions about language invisible. Literacy for All instead rested on the unspoken presumption of English as the default, singular language for literacy curriculum, teaching, and assessment. Its legacy remains evident in the Victorian Curriculum literacy standards, for example, with expectations that students can "analyse and explain the ways text structures and language features shape meaning and vary according to audience and purpose" (VCAA, n.d.), but never with reference to having students analyse and explain how structures and features work to shape meaning or vary according to similarities and differences between English and other languages. Put simply, the presumption is that the only language resource available to students for developing literacy is English.
That learner profile-one for whom English is their sole linguistic resource to reach their full literacy potential-is becoming increasingly less common in Australian classrooms. To take NSW as an example, roughly 2 in every 3 government schools (64.4%) saw increases in their proportion of students from Language Backgrounds Other Than English (LBOTE) in the period 2015(CESE, 2019. Similarly, although 2021 statistics indicate English-only speaking students remain the majority across NSW as a whole-at 62.8% of all students, compared with 37.2% of students from other language backgrounds-these aggregate figures disguise significant variance in linguistic diversity by region and school level. More than half (56.6%) of all students in Sydney, for example, have LBOTE profiles and, in Sydney-West, this rises to 72%-almost the inverse proportion of English-only to LBOTE students suggested by state-level statistics (CESE, 2022). Perhaps most significantly, the trend is expected to grow exponentially into the future, with LBOTE (50.1%) overtaking English-only (49.9%) enrolments into preschools attached to NSW government schools in 2018 (rising further to 51.3% in 2019, when statistics on this group was last published (CESE, 2020)).
A fundamental problem, then, is that curriculum, policy, and discourse frame literacy learning from the perspective of monolinguals, for literacy learners who are (or are becoming) bi/multilinguals. This problem is exacerbated by the historical tendency for applied linguistics and language education to position the monolingual native speaker as the ultimate target or ideal norm, relative to the non-native "learner". The result has been a succession of labels positioning these students as being from "non-English" speaking backgrounds, "English second" language speakers, English "language learners", or students from a language background "other than English". In each case, this framing works in a number of ways to perpetuate a deficit view of these students.
First, such students are positioned as always being developmentally "behind" the nativethey are, by definition, never able to be equal, let alone exceed, "native-ness". Cook (2007, p. 240) expresses this well is his argument that "phrasing the goal in terms of the native speaker means that L2 [second language] learning can only lead to degrees of failure, not degrees of success". Second, there is an assumption that a normative model exists-a singular, ideal version of "the" English language user-neglecting appreciable differences that do arise (and are often accepted, without question) between native speakers (e.g. pronunciation, lexical choice, syntax variations, etc.), as well as ignoring the complexity of actually attempting to define who/what "is" native (Davies, 2003). Third, the imagined target language model-even if it were to exist and be achievable-is ultimately neither useful nor appropriate since it is based on how monolinguals use English (as their only language), ignoring the reality of how bi/multilinguals actually use English: as part of an integrated multilingual repertoire through which to understand and engage with their world. Fourth, it focuses exclusively on the role of English in teaching and learning, thereby neglecting all other language resources that students bring to the teaching/learning relationship as assets from which to build on and further expand their existing literacy capacity, rather than starting from nothing (English).
That additional language students are a fundamentally different kind of learner relative to monolinguals, in contrast to simply being a "less able" learner, is supported by a significant body of literature. The learning progression of acquiring English as an additional language is qualitatively different, for example, from the monolingual developmental sequences when acquiring English as a first language (Dulay & Burt, 1974;Ellis, 1994). Within studies of second language acquisition, this has led to a new appreciation of "learner language" as not being an erroneous or defective version of the monolingual standard form, but as an emergent new system of language valid in its own right. This "interlanguage" (Cook, 1991;Selinker, 1972), as Ellis (1985) explains, is a "systematic knowledge of language … independent of both the learner's L1 and the L2 system he [sic] is trying to learn" (p. 42). Put simply, rather than language being a "L1+L2" relationship in the bilingual student's mind, meaning-making instead relies on a continuum of multiple linguistic repertoires that are working together as the basis for social practices (including learning, as well as literacy), thinking and cognition, and intercultural awareness.
The above has important implications for how we understand non-monolingual students, with Cook (2007, p. 245) arguing for a fundamental need to reposition them from being "English language learners", to instead acknowledging them for "what they are-L2 users": The L2 user concept, following Labov (1969), is rooted in difference rather than deficit. It recognises that L2 users are different kinds of people from monolingual native speakers, and need to be evaluated as people who speak two languages, not as inefficient natives. The L2 user concept arose in the context of the multi-competence approach to SLA [Second Language Acquisition]. Multi-competence is the knowledge of two or more languages in the same mind. It extends to the concept of interlanguage by recognising the continual presence of the L1 in the learner's mind alongside the second language, assuming that there is little point in studying the L2 as an isolated interlanguage system since its raison d'être is that it is added to a first language. Indeed, it may be wrong to count languages in people's minds-L1, L2, L3-as the language system exists in a single mind as a whole, akin to Chomsky's notion that the mental reality is a grammar, not a language (Chomsky, 1986). If the L2 user is the norm in the world, the monolingual has a more basic system because of its impoverished exposure to languages. (Cook, 2007, p. 241, emphasis in original) This reframing of language learner vis-à-vis user cannot be understated. As Cook (2007, p. 241, emphasis in original) goes on to argue further, "the term L2 user is conceptually different from L2 learner even when it refers to the same person. L2 users are exploiting whatever linguistic resources they have for a real-life purpose" (see also Cook & Wei, 2016;Heller, 2007;Wei, 2018). For literacies education, this has radical implications for rethinking students' needs (and resources), and what forms of pedagogical intervention are most appropriate.

A plurilingual approach to language and literacies teaching and learning
In responding to the challenges above, we argue for a plurilingual approach to teaching and learning literacies. A plurilingual approach focuses on developing strategies that scaffold students' own capacities to better recognise and use their existing language and literacies skills. In an increasingly linguistically diverse educational landscape, such an approach enables a shift from what students "lack", to instead identifying and productively mobilising the full range of linguistic resources and communicative repertories students bring to learning (García, 2014). We argue that calling on ones' full linguistic resources is integral and agentive for expanding languages and literacies knowledges and skills as language is at the core of meaning making, and knowledge and experience are shaped and enhanced through language. Correspondingly, a considerable body of international research undertaken in educational settings continues to report that experiences, skills, and knowledge from one language can transfer readily to learning to read and write in another targeted language, when students are supported in how to use the potential effects to their advantage (e.g. Cummins, 2014;Gibbons, 1991;Goodman et al., 1979;Lems et al., 2010;Rymes, 2014). With these tenets in mind, national and international educators and scholars are re-examining policy and curriculum and reimagining teaching and learning to disrupt, rather than perpetuate, monolingual orientations in education (Schalley et al., 2015). Pedagogies such as linguistically responsive pedagogies (Lucas & Villegas, 2013), culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2017), functional multilingual learning (Sierens & Van Avermaet, 2013), and translanguaging pedagogy (García, 2009;, amongst others, are taking up and extending the practices of bilingual, dialectical, and multilingual young people across educational contexts. Strategies that support teachers in developing plurilingual practices within their diverse classrooms continue to emerge (e.g. Duarte, 2019;Heugh et al., 2019;Leung & Valdes, 2019), and translanguaging pedagogies are garnering much attention in linguistically diverse Australian classrooms. Translanguaging involves the fluid and dynamic use of diverse linguistic resources by language users who draw from an integrated multilingual proficiency rather than from separate competencies based on named languages (Canagarajah, 2013). In an educational context, translanguaging centres on the linkages between and across languages, and the standard academic languages required in school. Promising lines of inquiry that consider identity and agency (reflectivity on language and learning) and engage young people in reflective plurilingual inquiry offer new ways to enhance the production and display of languages and literacies knowledge in English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D), as well as mainstream classrooms. Curricula are being enlivened and reinterpreted to embrace and encourage the use of multilingual and intercultural knowledge, and the experiences and biographies of students and communities. This research, as explored in the following sections, is providing evidence of increased student confidence, well-being and engagement, along with improved literacies learning across classrooms, when plurilingual pedagogies are employed.

Language, literacy, and identity
A plurilingual approach to teaching and learning brings the relationship between language and identity into sharp focus. Cummins et al. (2015) argue that educational achievement is related to the confirmation of identity and suggest that pedagogies that affirm identity have a significant impact on learning and teaching. It has become clear that when language learning centres on "mastery of the linguistic standard at the expense of other languages, dialects, and styles" (Bucholtz et al., 2014, p. 148), communicative competence can be lost, erased, or narrowed, especially under the influence of high-stakes testing (Lee, 2017). The silencing of students' full linguistic repertoires can have a profound effect on student identity and being and belonging across educational settings. When plurilingual knowledge and skills are not viewed as assets nor relevant to school learning, the provision of quality education can be compromised and inhibit students' abilities to engage in meaningful relationships with families and access the social and cultural resources in their immediate communities (D'warte, 2014). National and state Australian curricula already explicitly call for students to engage with and draw upon their own lived experiences across learning areas (ACARA, n.d.-b), and research suggests it is crucial for students to see themselves reflected in the content and language of the curriculum (e.g. Dutton & Rushton, 2021;Moloney & Chik, 2015;Oliver et al., 2021). While significant challenges remain in how to make students' lived experiences and knowledge visible through the curriculum, emerging research demonstrates the potential of these imperatives.
Research undertaken in Australian classrooms, for example, is revealing the importance of acknowledging students' home languages and the impact this has on student identity and learning. This is illustrated, for instance, in Moloney and Chik's (2015) research with Australian students in Year 1 and 5. Students drew pictures of themselves using their languages and then explained what they had drawn, with the visual data enabling a deeper exploration of learners' beliefs and practices. This plurilingual knowledge was then placed at the centre of their learning, which they then used to create innovative narratives about their everyday worlds. Choi and Slaughter (2021) used chronological grids to engage secondary learners in plotting their life circumstances and experiences with their language learning experiences. Here too, students and teachers were engaged in exploring the situational factors that influence language and identity development in order to develop a deeper sense of agency and engagement amongst language learners. Oliver et al. (2021) employed translanguaging pedagogies to draw on the complex linguistic practices of Australian Aboriginal children in mainstream classrooms. They found such practices gave authority to students' multifaceted linguistic and cultural identity, as well as potentially enhancing home language knowledge and Standard English. These Australian-based studies foreground the relationship between language and identity and illustrate its fundamental impact not only on student learning, but also on teachers' ability to reinterpret, challenge, and re-form dominant language and literacy practices in plurilingual classrooms.

Facilitating agency in language and literacy learning
Building on research examining identity, the role of agency and autonomy in language and literacy learning has also gained renewed attention in plurilingual classrooms. In this work, language learning is understood as a shared practice mediated by (plurilingual) social interaction (Vygotsky, 1987), revealing that when student reflexivity is encouraged, it not only works to amplify the individual and collective linguistic, communicative, and semiotic resources students employ in their everyday worlds (Bucholtz et al., 2014;Busch, 2012;Comber, 2016;Gibbons, 2012), but also offers opportunities for students to be agentive, and apply a critical lens to assigned language learning tasks. As discussed above, we argue it further expands students' existing literacy capacity, rather than the idea of starting from "nothing" (English).
Recent research highlights how student agency and autonomy can be constructively employed in classroom language learning. French's (2016, p. 314) ethnographic case study in an Australian metropolitan secondary school where students spoke 40 languages found that despite limited teacher and school support, students employed multilingual resources and displayed "a wide range of cognitive, linguistic, metalinguistic, communicative and social skills" in sophisticated ways as they completed individual and collaborative learning tasks across subject areas. D'warte (2014, 2021) has also undertaken research in the primary and secondary Australian school context, engaging young people as linguistic ethnographers of their own practices in diverse classrooms. In this research, teachers used students' plurilingual knowledge and experience for language learning tasks across subject areas, targeting outcomes and descriptors from the NSW English K-10 syllabi. Multimodal register dimensions were explored in class, and teachers used students' explorations as a catalyst for writing informative and persuasive texts. Findings across classrooms commonly included improved peer-to-peer relationships, self-esteem, metalinguistic awareness, and questioning skills. Teachers also reported significant improvement in the completion and complexity of writing tasks, particularly amongst students who were reluctant writers. At the primary school level, Turner's (2019) work in a Japanese/ English bilingual school researched the use of foreign and heritage languages across the curriculum and found that using multilingualism as a resource was agentive for students, enhancing engagement with learning outcomes across key learning areas. These studies, undertaken in different Australian contexts, offer positive and significant insights into student agency, and also highlight teachers' ability to enliven English literacies teaching by drawing on students' lived experiences.

Reconstructing texts to enhance language and literacies knowledge
Research has also revealed that placing cultural and linguistic flexibility at the centre of teaching and learning provides a vehicle through which to explore and reconstruct literacies in new ways. Positioning students as legitimate knowers and experts in their own lives has helped to expand our understandings of the ways language and literacies are enacted and can be expanded. Cope and Kalantzis (2000) argue that meaning is made not only in multiple languages but also in multiple modes and media. This expanded notion of literacy, which includes not only print-based reading and writing in the dominant language, but also multimodal and multilingual literacies as practised by diverse communities, is being taken up in Australian classrooms. Young people are producing multilingual, multimodal texts that include, for example, drawing and mapping, music and drama, video, and creative works and performances (e.g. Choi & Slaughter, 2021;Cummins & Early, 2011;Dutton & Rushton, 2021;D'warte, 2021;Ollerhead et al., 2020;Slaughter & Cross, 2021). French and Armitage (2020), for example, found that when students in two secondary schools in NSW and South Australia were given the opportunity to bring their own languages and knowledges to classrooms, multimodal and multilingual literacies were enhanced. Students were actively engaged and developed a deeper understanding of concepts, leading to additional linguistic and cultural knowledge being introduced into the classroom, as well as greater involvement of family and community members in the learning process. In secondary English classrooms, Rushton (2018a, 2018b) employed translanguaging approaches with drama-based pedagogy and explorations of poetry. They encouraged students to collaboratively develop spoken and then written texts that foregrounded their individual voices and their linguistic and cultural knowledge. Students were engaged in rich discussions around texts, enhancing students' individual repertoires and English literacies learning for all participants. Similarly, research by Ollerhead et al. (2020) in a secondary Health Science class found that a teacher's inclusion of otherwise unfamiliar translanguaging strategies enhanced students' language learning, most particularly students' abilities to produce scientific texts in English. These studies point to the ongoing promise of pluralistic pedagogy in enhancing and extending language and literacies teaching and learning that goes some way to responding to the demands of mandated literacies assessments.

Expanding and enriching English languages and literacies knowledge for all students
The expertise of teachers shapes effective multilingual pedagogy even in educational settings where monolingual practices prevail. As revealed above, creative, experienced teachers are developing tasks, activities, and assessment that make multilingual practices more visible (see also Choi et al., this issue). Research reveals that multilingual students thrive in contexts that acknowledge their multilingual competence (Cummins, 2014), and it is pertinent to remember that linguistic diversity across our student community is also present across our teaching community. We suggest that understanding how languages work together as a system can expand and enrich English languages and literacies knowledge for all students. Ongoing research indicates that incorporating multilingualism and multiliteracies into classrooms does not require homogenous classrooms or teachers who speak the languages of the students they are teaching (Choi & Ollerhead, 2018;Duarte, 2019). Lo Bianco (2014) points out that, "acknowledging multilingualism and multi-literacy throughout the academic and administrative operations of education can enhance the quality, seriousness and equity of education for all learners, not just for those who were brought up multilingually" (p. 17).
An understanding of how incorporating multilingualism and multiliteracies into schooling benefits all students is still an underdeveloped area of research, particularly in the Australian context. We know that supporting all students to develop understandings and insights about the nature of language is a necessary skill for literacy development (Bialystok, 2001). However, international research from classrooms with monolingual and multilingual students is showcasing how language learning can be enhanced. Research conducted in an Irish primary school where 320 pupils spoke 50 home languages, found that both native Irish students and immigrant families developed a sophisticated degree of language awareness and high levels of age-appropriate literacy in English, Irish, French, and home languages when home languages were included in classroom communication (Little & Kirwan, 2019). Machado and Hartman's (2019) study of writing in primary classrooms with diverse students involved students in translingual writing, defined as a strategy that enables students to draw on the fullest extent of their repertoire. In this US study, students both multilingual and monolingual composed poetry using multiple languages and codes. Machado and Hartman found that children with no formal instruction in languages beyond English could still engage in translingual writing and make "creative and strategic choices in their writing across languages" (2019, p. 500). These studies demonstrate that disrupting rather than sustaining the monolingual classroom domain has the potential to enhance the pedagogical design and development of languages and literacies education for all students.

Enabling change: ideology, policy, and practice
Although we are excited by the possibilities inherent in adopting a plurilingual approach to language and literacies teaching and learning, we remain mindful that educational practices, and pedagogy in particular, are highly situated (Cross, 2010;Johnson, 2006) and intimately linked to the underlying socio-political and educational structures. The uptake of any new strategy ideal under one context may have unintended consequences in another (e.g. Bax, 2003;Butler, 2005;Holliday, 1994;Hu, 2005;McDonough & Chaikitmongkol, 2007). It is of critical importance that we therefore interrogate the interface of plurilingual educational practices, existing governmental and educational frameworks, and the interpretation and implementation of these ideas by teachers. We must also consider the lived experiences of students and the communities to which they belong to advance possibilities for a plurilingual perspective in Australian classrooms. In doing so, we argue three key points.

All linguistic resources should be acknowledged and welcomed
The integration of pluralist approaches to language and literacy learning in schools needs to account for the conditioning, social positioning, and valuing of students' linguistic lives in relation to education systems. As detailed above, recent research has brought attention to the fluidity and dynamic language practices of multilinguals in language teaching pedagogy and in student learning. However, the valuing and positioning of languages at a societal and an educational level is highly political (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2009;Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). To illustrate, in the Australian context, when the acquisition of particular languages is seen as instrumentally useful, valued, and supported (e.g. Asian languages under NALSAS/P), some forms of bilingual education have been privileged. In contrast, the maintenance and development of home languages is rarely socially validated, instead being judged as a kind of remediation of disadvantage (e.g. Indigenous or migrant languages, as in the Compulsory Teaching in English for the First Four Hours of Each School Day policy introduced by the Northern Territory Department of Education (2008); see also Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2017, p. 357;Simpson et al., 2009;Smala et al., 2012).
The role of social class in languages and languages education also shows that the marketisation of schooling and the association of cultural capital to languages education differs across socioeconomic contexts (e.g. Perry & Southwell, 2014;Wright et al., 2018).  research, for example, shows that the linking of languages with cultural capital is deployed by schools aiming to attract middle class parents, with an absence of this discourse in lower socio-economic schools. In these contexts, the community languages spoken by students are instead viewed as a hinderance, rather than of benefit to literacy acquisition and full access to the Australian workforce. Unfortunately, many young people, along with their parents, do not see their home language competencies as assets and instead hold internalised deficit views of their own skills (D'warte, 2014French, 2016;Rymes, 2014). Within a plurilingual perspective, all linguistic resources should be acknowledged and welcomed.

Curriculum and assessment must be framed within a pluriliteracies orientation
The integration of a plurilingual perspective in education is dependent on educational stakeholders creating "ideological spaces that move away from monoglossic language ideologies toward heteroglossic language ideologies and implementational spaces that provide concrete tools for enacting this vision in the classroom" (Flores & Schissel, 2014, p. 454). If curriculum standards fail to allow for more expansive understandings of literacies-as pluriliteracies-and if assessment systems continue to perpetuate limited and limiting understandings of language and literacy, the effectiveness of any pedagogical change will also be restricted. As noted above, research suggests that when language learning centres on mastery of the linguistic standard (in this case, SAE), without acknowledging or leveraging other languages, dialects, and registers (Bucholtz et al., 2014), the influence of high-stakes testing can perpetuate this narrow valuing and defining of linguistic repertoires (e.g. Macqueen et al., 2019). Disbray's (2016) study in a remote urban township in Central Australia with Indigenous children who were speakers of Wumpurrarni English clearly illustrates this point. The children in the study, aged between 5 and 14, demonstrated their narrative skills in sophisticated ways in their home language variety, yet these skills and understandings were not visible in a culture of highstakes literacy testing.
As a point of contrast, in Victoria, the newly developed English as an Additional Language (EAL) curriculum has three language modes that align with the English curriculum: speaking and listening, reading and viewing, and writing. Each mode contains three strands, one of which is cultural and plurilingual awareness. This strand focuses on: understanding and using the cultural conventions of spoken and written communication in Standard Australian English-including the relationships between text and context, and audience and purpose-and drawing on the knowledge and resources of students' other languages and cultures to negotiate communication and enhance learning. (VCAA, 2019) The inclusion of cultural and plurilingual awareness within the EAL curriculum, across all three language modes, creates the "implementational space" to which Flores and Schissel (2014, p. 454) refer, and opportunities for teachers to unpack what this may look like in practice and for their students in class. The possibility is now there for a reframing of language and literacy practices and the fostering of plurilingual practices.
This work must be undertaken by national and state-level curriculum and assessment authorities in consultation with stakeholders and educators. The development of the Victorian EAL curriculum is an example of this, led the Victorian Department of Education and the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, but informed by a widespread consultation process with stakeholders and educators. As argued at the start of this paper, though, this work needs to go beyond a narrow focus on EAL alone, to instead understand how a pluriliteracies framework can be embedded in the national curriculum and in associated state-level curricula. A pluriliteracies perspective must also frame NAPLAN testing so that all students in Australia can meaningfully participate to ensure that literacy capabilities of all students are measured in more meaningful ways (see also Choi et al., this issue). Such change, however, will not occur in the short term and it is in the immediate space that teachers will play the most critical role.

Teacher should be empowered to make change
Although policy and educational frameworks can negatively shape and diminish notions of literacy (e.g. as if to suggest it means capabilities in "English only"), the translation of policy to practice depends on its interpretation at classroom level: teachers are the ultimate point of departure for education policy (Lo Bianco, 2010). The decisions that teachers make, Lo Bianco (2010, p. 165) argues, and how they implement pedagogical practices, "ultimately constitute an enacted language and literacy policy". This role of the teacher "as a historical, sociological agent within larger (and political) contexts" (Cross, 2010, p. 434;Cross & Gearon, 2004) is of critical interest. Recent work in this area, for example, has illustrated the potential of "very concrete practices which go at least some way to subverting the dominance of English-only structures within education systems, despite the narrowing of national priorities and even more localized school-level preferences" (Slaughter & Cross, 2021, p. 57; see also, Choi & Ollerhead, 2018;French, 2016;Heugh, 2015;Sierens & Van Avermaet, 2013).
Given that research shows multilingual students thrive in contexts that acknowledge their multilingual competence (Cummins, 2014), it is vital that pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes address this issue and support teachers to articulate a pluriliteracies approach in their classrooms. It is also pertinent to remember that the multilingualism present across our student community is also present across our teaching community. As teachers have been trained through a prism of policies that have continually reduced notions of literacy, many are also positioned as "silenced plurilinguals, whose skills go to waste" (Ellis, 2016, p. 268). The rich cultural and linguistic "funds of knowledge" (Moll et al., 1992) that many students and teachers possess are not often acknowledged enough nor leveraged to advance new forms of effective teaching, particularly for students with diverse language backgrounds (Anderson & Stillman, 2013;Coleman, 2016). Extensive work is required to document, illustrate, and support the application of plurilingual approaches to teaching and learning. Much of the work being undertaken in Australia, as detailed above, serves us well to meet the goals of Professional Standards for Teachers which such as the need for teachers to "know their students and how they learn" (Standard 1), which includes "students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds" (Focus area 1.3; AITSL, 2011, p. 10).

Concluding remarks
Australia's increasingly multilingual school-aged population represents a multitude of languages, language practices, and cultural and linguistic hybridity, which is at times silenced within Australia's monolingual and monoglossic educational structures. These structures and teaching practices can filter out children's dynamic and complex forms of expression, inhibiting access to the curriculum and denying children the opportunity to bring their own lived experiences into the school context. The importance of literacy is indisputable, but the positioning of literacy as inextricably linked to the English language (only) must be challenged if we are to enable equitable access to educational development for all children.
In considering the intersections of education and policy, practice, and ideology, we therefore need to recognise that the lived linguistic lives of students are as much an ideological and political issue as an educational one. As Kubota (2014, p. 9) argues, "without addressing power and ideology, advocacy of multi/plural approaches and hybridity in language use can become complicit with domination and will fail to solve real problems". Social and political discourses and the monolingual framing of curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy must be challenged and rewritten, informed by the substantial research demonstrating the impact of empowering students to better recognise and draw on their existing language and literacy skills. As we have argued, meaning-making and the shaping of knowledge and experience is constructed through language. A pluriliteracies lens can play an agentive role in expanding the complex language and literacies knowledge and skills of all Australian students.
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Declarations
Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.
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