Christine Hélot

Shifting Monolingula ideology in Teacher Education in France: Translingual Writers and Creativity in Bilingual Pedagogy

Our presentation will propose a critical analysis of the conceptualisation of bilingual education in France and illustrate how language in education policies are still marked by a monolingual ideology where languages are viewed as separate bounded entities. In order to challenge this ideology with student teachers enrolled in the bilingual education program (French-German) at the University of Strasbourg, we have selected a number of multilingual writers who self-translate their own work or use translanguaging, in other words who break with the traditional barriers that separate languages and in the process create new literary voices. Our aim is to make future bilingual teachers aware of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by heteroglossic approaches such as crossing language barriers or blending languages (Blackledge and Creese, 2014). We also wish to help them understand how bi-multilinguals perform their identity through a creative use of their multiple languages, why bilingual authors choose to translanguage and how such examples can foster and legitimize a heteroglossic pedagogy of literacy in bilingual programs and multilingual classrooms (Hélot, Sneddon and Daly, 2014).

References

Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (eds) (2014) Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy, Dordrecht: Springer

Hélot, C., Sneddon, R. and Daly, N. (eds) (2014) Children’s Literature in Multilingual Classrooms, London: IOE Press/Trentham Books.