Language Narratives and Shifting Multilingual Pedagogies: English Teaching from the South

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Description

This book challenges monoglossic ideologies, traditional language pedagogies and dominant forms of knowledge construction by foregrounding multilingual and multicultural students language narratives, repertoires, and identities. The research is based on a sixteen-year longitudinal study of a sociolinguistics course at an English language university and the language narratives produced by the first-year education students. The study was borne out of a need to create a critically inclusive course that would engage a cohort of students from socially and linguistically diverse backgrounds in contemporary South Africa. Drawing on data from over 5,000 students who have journeyed through this course, this book shows how a narrative heteroglossic pedagogy harnesses students multilingual strengths. A close analysis reveals complex identity work by students located in the Global South. The authors argue that decolonising language education is about reconceptualising language, reconfiguring what knowledges are valued in the classroom, and reshaping pedagogy.

Reviews

Mendelowitz, Ferreira and Dixon provide us with a compelling account of what critical English teacher education can look like in multilingual and highly unequal contexts. Meticulously and provocatively described and analysed, this is a courageous and honest account of 16 years of experience in critical-creative pedagogies that unsettle dominant language ideologies, and foreground the powerful language resources of multilingual African language speaking students. * Carolyn McKinney, Associate Professor of Language Education, University of Cape Town, South Africa *
This searing treatise invites us to become good story tellers and students of society once again. Troubling the stranglehold of traditional orthodoxy in language education pedagogical designs, this book is a long-awaited addition that deserves a space on the bookshelves of all social scientists committed to thinking and theorizing otherwise. * Finex Ndhlovu, University of New England, Australia *
Based on students narrations about their lived experience of language and their perceptions of unequal power relations and social exclusion the authors cover a period of considerable social changes something only very few titles can provide. With its orientation on decolonizing methodologies the book offers a much needed perspective from the global south. * Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna, Austria and Stellenbosch University, South Africa *
This book unravels the complexity of language, power and identity with cogency, lucidity and courage. Through an analysis that combines theoretical rigor with a kaleidoscope of compelling personal narratives, Mendelowitz, Ferreira and Dixon dispel the myth that storytelling has no place in academic discourse by showing how it can promote inclusion and social justice in education. * Andrea Parmegiani, Professor, Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, USA and North-West University Vanderbijlpark, South Africa *

Author Bio

Belinda Mendelowitz is Senior Lecturer in Languages, Literacies & Literatures at the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Ana Ferreira is Senior Lecturer in Languages, Literacies & Literatures at the School of Education of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Kerryn Dixon is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK.