Explores translanguaging with speakers of less commonly taught languages in mainstream US schools

This book explores multilingual practices such as translanguaging, code-switching and stylization in secondary classrooms in Hawai’i. Using linguistic ethnography, it investigates how students in a linguistically diverse class, including those who speak less commonly taught languages, deal with learning tasks and the social life of the class when using these languages alongside English as a lingua franca. It discusses implications for teachers, from balancing student needs in lesson planning and instruction to classroom management, where the language use of one individual or group can create challenges of understanding, participation or deficit identity positionings for another. The book argues that students must not only be allowed to flex their whole language repertoires to learn and communicate but also be aware of how to build bridges across differences in individual repertoires. It offers suggestions for teachers to consider within their own contexts, highlighting the need for teacher autonomy to cultivate the classroom community’s critical language awareness and create conducive environments for learning. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, researchers and academics working in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography as well as pre-service and in-service teachers in linguistically diverse secondary school contexts.

"Excellent classroom research that speaks to important issues of equity and social justice. The author makes theoretical and empirical analysis such a delight to read and a source of insights to inspire a whole next generation of teachers, researchers and teacher educators in plurilingual and pluricultural settings." - Angel M. Y. Lin, Simon Fraser University, Canada

"This book delivers a powerful message about the benefits and challenges of classroom multilingualism, based on the Hawaiian concept of HĀ, with an eye toward ensuring that all students’ strengths are considered to create and sustain a caring multilingual classroom community. There is so much to learn from this extraordinary work." - Christian Faltis, Texas A&M International University, USA

"

Mendoza's book weaves together a variety of sociolinguistic lenses to delve into teacher-student interactions in English-medium classrooms in Hawaii. It offers insights into how classroom translanguaging could be framed: with, as Mendoza puts it, attention to equity, criticality, and safety for all students.

"

Anna Mendoza’s book is an invitation not only to languaging but to translanguaging in a world of responsibility in the search for total well-being [...] This book sends a powerful message about the benefits, challenges and possibilities of classroom practices to foster the promotion of funds of knowledges, especially for marginalized communities with an immigrant or refugee background.

"

Mendoza’s book does not disappear in the ocean of research literature or simply add to it. Instead, it stands out by bringing fresh theoretical and classroom-grounded insights on the ways high school students in Hawai’i engage in various forms of translanguaging for identity positioning, thus creating and maintaining a complex and dynamic classroom ecology [...] In the end, this book, this impressive piece of research, is about and for student and teacher empowerment. As Mendoza concludes, the success of linguistically and culturally inclusive classrooms rests in “in the critical educator’s hands”.