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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 advancepluriliteraciesas 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.

The 21st century has brought rapid global change to the cultural and linguistic landscape of many nations; this rapidly changing landscape has prompted educators to argue that the lived and evolving reality of contemporary classrooms demands a re-examination of current curriculum, pedagogies and assessment practices. Australian classrooms now include young people who speak many different languages and dialects of English; these young people draw on multiple ways of learning and understanding and are increasingly mobile and connected across time and space. Over the last two decades, rather than building on this linguistic diversity Australia’s national assessment program has relegated difference to a problem fixed by further commitment to standardized English curriculum and assessment practices. In this environment, attention is given to what is perceived as limited or lacking in young people’s knowledge of the English language and literacies practices most valued in school. This article presents research that aimed to acknowledge and build on the foundational linguistic resources of young people in super-diverse mainstream primary classrooms through the application of visual methodologies (language mapping) and corresponding pedagogical work. This research, undertaken in Western Sydney, one of the most diverse regions in Australia, offers possibilities for perpetuating and fostering a pluralist present and future in 21st century classrooms.

Globalisation has contributed to increasing diversity with children and families, bringing multiple languages and cultures into early childhood settings around the world. While this has enhanced our settings, research suggests that educators are struggling to find ways to support children’s learning and development in super diverse contexts. Standardised curriculum and pedagogy have complicated matters by suggesting that all children can achieve the same outcome if given the same program. Failing to recognize and acknowledge the complexity of teaching and learning in diverse settings leads to practices that position children and their families as deficient, viewing children and families based on what they lack rather than building from their strengths. In this manuscript we look through the theoretical lenses of funds of knowledge and funds of identity. The two constructs are brought together to explore how innovative, creative arts-based methods from two different research projects in ECE settings across Australia and Chile made children and families’ funds of knowledge and funds of identity visible and potentially impacted learning, participants’ perspectives, and community engagement in these diverse settings. We offer evidence of the ways arts-based methods promoted creativity and agency for all participants in and across both early learning contexts.

While recent literacy research shows an increasing uptake in multimodal literacies, there remains a disjunction between multimodal literacy teaching and assessment. This paper offers a critical rev...

Although unevenly distributed, many Australian classrooms are increasingly diverse and include young people from a wide variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, young people who speak many different languages and dialects of English. These diverse classrooms offer rich and exciting teaching and learning opportunities and require innovative pedagogies that bolster the abilities of educators to draw upon young peoples' transcultural and translingual competencies. This paper details curricula and pedagogies employed in a classroom with six- to eight-year old children newly arrived in Australia. In this classroom, children were positioned as ethnographers of their own language practices; language repertoires were recognized, validated and treated as resources for learning. Analysis centres on the relevant connections made between academic content, children's experiences and the promotion of children's identities as bilingual meaning-makers.

This chapter explores the way place influences the emotional and communicative patterns of conflict that arise in negotiating literacy learning and belonging in three culturally and linguistically diverse primary schools in Western Sydney, Australia. Studying language and place opens up communication and enables teachers, students and communities to share their experiences and biographies. Young people are positioned as researchers of, and experts in, the ways that they use their language and literacies to navigate local and global contexts. Positioning young people as active agents in their own learning not only facilitates communication but also places local diversity and global connectedness together in support of learning for all.

In this paper, discourse analytical methods are applied to data from two middle school classrooms, as a teacher, researcher, and students’ engage in research based curricula ( Martinez et al., 2008 , Orellana and Reynolds, 2008 ) designed to leverage students’ language brokering skills and facilitate discussion about languages. Analysis centers on teacher and researcher mediated talk that engages students in exploring their linguistic skills through an examination of voice and register in multiple settings. This paper argues that engaging in talk about how language meets our social needs can provide an authentic and valuable way for teachers and students to recognize what they can do and do bring to the classroom. This type of talk can also help to cultivate students’ metalinguistic awareness and promote students’ discursive consciousness.

The authors consider how the National Early Literacy Panel’s decision to focus on identifying precursors to “conventional” literacy skills shaped the questions asked, conclusions drawn, and take-home message of the panel’s 2008 report. They suggest that this approach may keep the field of literacy research from seeing and valuing other kinds of “head starts”—including ones that are better aligned with the broad, flexible, transcultural literacy skills that will be demanded in the future. The authors call on the field to learn from the experiences of children from nondominant groups to build a more comprehensive model of literacy development.

Super-diversity is put to work as a theoretical and methodological approach to study language and literacy in five Australian classrooms. A linguistic ethnographic approach employed to look through the lens of lived experiences, sociocultural practices and modes of life of five classes of young people aged 10–14, brings super-diversity into sharp focus. Young people are participating in new forms of communicative practices at a local and global level. Multilingualism and the emergence of increased fluidity in language and identity are on view and the implications for language and literacy teaching and learning in today’s super diverse global classrooms are explored.