Description
Book SynopsisIn this linguistic ethnography of bilingual science learning in a South African high school, the author connects microanalyses of classroom discourse to broader themes of de/coloniality in education. The book challenges the deficit narrative often used to characterise the capabilities of linguistically-minoritised youth, and explores the challenges and opportunities associated with leveraging students’ full semiotic repertoires in learning specific concepts. The author examines the linguistic landscape of the school and the beliefs and attitudes of staff and students which produce both coloniality and cracks in the edifice of coloniality. A critical translanguaging lens is applied to analyse multilingual and multimodal aspects of students’ science meaning-making in a traditional classroom and a study group intervention. Finally, the book suggests implications for decolonial pedagogical translanguaging in Southern multilingual classrooms.
Trade ReviewThrough detailed ethnographic research, this book presents a vision of decolonial learning in South Africa – students drawing on their full semiotic repertoires to make their voices heard, as they shape the future of knowledge creation. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with de/coloniality in education and society. * Adrian Blackledge, University of Stirling, UK *
Robyn Tyler provides a beautifully detailed, as well as theoretically and methodologically innovative, linguistic ethnography of the ‘coloniality of language’ and ‘decolonial cracks’ in high school science learning on the periphery of Cape Town. Making visible the resourceful, multi-semiotic meaning-making of marginalized African language speaking students, the book makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship in critical sociolinguistics and bi/multilingual education from the Global South.
* Carolyn McKinney, University of Cape Town, South Africa *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Chapter 1. De/coloniality and Language in South African Schooling
Chapter 2. Language, the Body and Identity in Learning
Chapter 3. Language at Success High: Ideologies and Practices
Chapter 4. Constraint in Curriculum, Assessment and Classroom Discourse
Chapter 5. Decolonial Cracks Introduced by Students
Chapter 6. Decolonial Cracks in Pedagogy: Freedom and Resistance
Chapter 7. Conclusion: Widening the Cracks
Appendix 1: A Multilingual Science Resources list
Appendix 2: Grade 9 Chemical Reactions Tests and Worksheets: English, isiXhosa and Translingual
Appendix 3: Transcription Conventions
References
Index
