Search

Language ideologies profoundly shape and constrain the use of language as a resource for learning in 'multilingual' or linguistically diverse classrooms. In this paper, we draw attention in particular to the ideology of languages as stable, boundaried objects and to the colonial invention of African languages. Against this backdrop, we analyse an example of pedagogical practice which was designed in response to a linguistic ethnography of Year 9 Science learning in a South African high school. The aim of this intervention is to move beyond the constraints of current language ideologies and to enable bilingual isiXhosa/English students to use a wide range of resources from their semiotic repertoires for learning Science. We will argue that debates about language of instruction in post-colonial contexts which pit one named language against another, misdirect our attention away from how the resources of language and other semiotic modes are or are not being used for learning in classroom discourse and learning materials. We aim to show how pedagogical translanguaging and trans-semiotising can be taken up as strategies of disinvention and reconstitution of 'language' for learning Science. (195)

The data discussed in this paper is drawn from research conducted in a multilingual urban primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the official language of instruction is English and the majority of learners are African language speakers, frequently with very limited English proficiency. The paper presents a case study of one child who uses her own multilingual resources in order to draw her peers into the routines and meaning-making processes of classroom life. It explores the extent to which this learner, despite being in year one of formal schooling, uses hybrid discursive practices to cross several boundaries: adult-child; teacher-learner; peer/friend-teacher; English-proficient-multilingual. It considers the opportunities for peer participation in classroom activities created through the case-study learner's hybridising of identity positions and examines the way in which this learner "reads" the classroom environment and positions herself in the classroom space. The paper argues that the case-study learner is using her bi\multilingual resources to induct other learners into ways of doing and being at school, and as such to construct a classroom community.

Framed by decolonial theory, this paper explores how language and literacy ideologies, including Anglonormativity, or the expectation that children should be proficient in a standardised version of English and are deficient if not, shape language and literacy practices in South African classrooms. While not legitimised, the use of fluid language practices in classroom discourse in the Global South is well documented. Less explored is the impact of language ideologies on children's written text production. Using the tools of linguistic ethnography, I focus on the literacy practices emergent bilingual children are engaged with in a Natural Science lesson in year 4, the first year of their transition from 'home language' language of instruction (LOI) to monolingual English LOI. A close analysis of the practice of learners making notes in the lesson shows a pretextual gap between the expectations of the activity: that the children will be proficient in the 'English' used for note-making as well as orthography and layout conventions of written notes, and the heterographic writing they are able to produce. I examine the written products of note-making against a contested history of the use of African languages for writing fiction, and the exclusion of African languages from formal education, thus within a context of coloniality of language. I argue that the concept of ukuzilanda can inspire the expansion of literacies in African languages in education, enabling us to build from an existing literate and oral tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that theories of "decoloniality" provide valuable insights into the social relations of "Model C" schools that have been brought into visibility in particular ways by the wave of student protests during and after 2016. Our starting point is to provide a brief outline of the central arguments made by a particular strand of theorists who have developed the term "decoloniality." We then look briefly at the history of "Model C" schools, locating their formation in the compromises of the negotiated settlement that characterised South Africa's political transition in the 1990s. We look in particular at language policy and practices in these previously white schools and at the power relations of language in South Africa. In this account, we argue that "Model C" schools exemplify the entangled power matrix that characterises coloniality. "Model C" schools, we argue, provide a clear example of how deep historical inequalities persist well past the formal end of colonialism. Pressing this argument further, we outline some possible implications for changes in schooling that a decoloniality approach invites.

This paper focuses on the lack of impact on language education of recent paradigm shifts in the study of language and society such as the recognition of the ideology of language[s] as stable, discrete or bounded entities and the reality of heteroglossic languaging and semiotic practices in everyday life. Using South Africa as a case, the paper explores the implications of heteroglossic conceptualising of language as social practice for language education through three ethnographically informed case studies of classroom discourse. I will argue that monoglossic orientations which ironically underpin both monolingual and "multilingual" approaches have wide-ranging constraining effects on how children are positioned in schooling, and on children's participation in classrooms, resulting in a form of "epistemic injustice" (Fricker, 2007). [This article was written with Hannah Carrim, Alex Marshall, and Laura Layton.]

Existing research on language in South African schooling frequently draws attention to the problematic hegemony of English and the lack of access to quality education in the home language of the majority of learners, often drawing on the metaphor of a gap or a disjuncture between post-apartheid language in education policy (LiEP) and its implementation. We argue that the notion of a "gap" obscures the significant continuities between apartheid and post-apartheid LiEPs, as well as conceptions of what language is and what counts as linguistic competence and capital. Language ideologies and the discursive operation of power serve as an analytical framework to make sense of the continuities between apartheid and present language policies and classroom practices. We argue that without an understanding of the language ideologies informing both policy and practices, we will not be able to shift practices in South African classrooms so that learners' full multilingual repertoires can be legitimately used as resources for learning. The paper presents data focusing on the intersections of language ideologies, discourses and practices in two suburban schools, one primary and one secondary, in the urban metropolis of Johannesburg, South Africa, where black learners have replaced white learners, i.e. in de(re)segregated schools.

Multilingualism as a consequence of transnational mobility and migration is prominent in studies of language socialization and family multilingualism in the Global North. While mobility within and between the various regions in South Africa sustains multilingualism and aligns with the global dynamic of mobility, Indigenous multilingualism is inherently the norm. The officiation of 11 named languages positions the country as linguistically diverse. However, dominant ideologies from the coloniality of language continue to reinforce the power of colonial languages while African languages used by numerical majorities remain marginalized, especially in high-status domains such as education. In this article, we present ethnographic data from a case study of a Xhosa multilingual family traversing between their urban (township) homes and the main family homestead in a rural setting. The family includes a child who attends a suburban historically whites-only English medium school. Reflecting on the non-hierarchical use of languages within their homes, or their languaging, we show how they use their linguistic/semiotic and spatial repertoires to make family as well as to resist the hierarchical positioning of the colonial languages, English and Afrikaans, above isiXhosa (prefix isi- indicates the language of Xhosa people) at school. Informed by Siqwana-Ndulo's (1998) challenge to the Western idea of the nuclear family, our analysis demonstrates how family is distributed across kinship ties and households. We introduce the notion of ikhaya -- the isiXhosa word for both family and home (see Molate, forthcoming) -- as a useful southern concept for accounting for the expansive nature of family kinship systems in African families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on school desegregation in South Africa has largely documented an assimilationist process. As in educational contexts elsewhere, the assimilationist position presupposes that learners from non-dominant groups are made to change their ways of being on entering schools from which they were previously excluded. Drawing on an ethnographic case-study of a suburban girls' school in Johannesburg, South Africa, where "black" learners have replaced "white" learners, as well as on post-structuralist theorizing of "discourse" and "identity", this paper engages with and critiques the assimilationist position. I reconstruct the discursive positioning of the girls within official school discourses, thus highlighting the powerful assimilationist project of the school, but go on to explore the ways in which the learners use a range of semiotic resources not valued in official school discourses to subvert their positioning. I conclude that in inhabiting the school, the girls experience both repressive and liberatory effects, and they themselves produce mobile points of resistance. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper explores difficulties in talking about "race" and difference in a post-apartheid university classroom. The data come from classroom-based research conducted in a first-year undergraduate English Studies course at a historically "white" and Afrikaans university in South Africa. Drawing on poststructuralist ideas on discourse and the self, discourse and society, I analyse moments from classroom discourse and argue that the ways in which the students talk and think about "race" and culture echo both resonances of the past as well as discourses in current circulation. I draw on the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia in order to understand why "race" is simultaneously a taboo topic and an important self-identifier (the product of both apartheid discourses of discrimination and post-apartheid discourses of equity and redress) and argue for the need to deconstruct essentialist notions of "race" and culture in the post-apartheid classroom. (Contains 14 notes.)

This article discusses practitioner research that focused on student resistance to teaching about the apartheid past and issues of "race" in a first year English studies course at a predominantly Afrikaans and "white" university in South Africa. The study aimed to explore the way in which students and the teacher engaged with a form of critical pedagogy moment-by-moment in the classroom. In this article, I turn the analytical spotlight onto myself, analysing the way in which my own multiple and sometimes contradictory identity positions as an educator play themselves out. In particular, I explore the tensions between my preferred "democratic" teaching style, and my moral or ethical views. I argue that this tension creates a dilemma for teaching within critical pedagogy, which is not easily resolved. I also reflect on the experience of researching my own teaching practice, and attempt to understand how my research insights were developed, linking this to the distinction between reflective practice and action research. (Contains 4 notes.)

This article presents classroom-based research conducted in a first-year undergraduate English and Cultural Studies course at an historically 'white' and Afrikaans university in South Africa. I document my attempt to address issues of social inequality, especially racism and the apartheid past, in a South African literature course. Drawing on poststructuralist identity theory, I explore the students' difficulties in dealing with the apartheid past, arguing that their racialised identities are central to understanding their (in)ability to engage with the course.

Research on student responses to Critical Pedagogy frequently highlights their opposition to transformational agendas. This paper focuses on student opposition at a predominantly 'white' South African university to materials that represent the apartheid past. Engaging with the imperatives of transformation characterizing post-apartheid Higher Education in South Africa, and drawing on post-structuralist identity theory, the paper analyses contradictions in student discourses on the apartheid past. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which a focus on identity could contribute to dismantling opposition to Critical Pedagogy.