Plurilingual Pedagogies in Language Education

Plurilingual pedagogies represent a paradigm shift in language education towards recognising, valourising and strategically deploying learners’ diverse linguistic repertoires. Rather than treating languages as discrete systems to be acquired in isolation, this approach encourages dynamic interplay among multiple languages within the classroom and beyond. Drawing on socio-cultural and complexity theories, plurilingual pedagogies foreground mediation, translanguaging and plurilanguaging as core practices that promote learner agency, intercultural competence and identity affirmation. Underpinned by the descriptors of the CEFR Companion Volume, this pedagogy fosters mediation skills that enable learners to navigate multilingual contexts, negotiate meaning across cultural boundaries and develop reflexive linguistic awareness. Practical applications range from digital and decolonial learning environments to music-mediated interventions, all sharing an emphasis on flexibility, criticality and the holistic integration of learners’ linguistic and cultural experiences. Globally, plurilingual pedagogies address the realities of migration, globalisation and digital communication, offering inclusive strategies for diverse classrooms and empowering learners to become active participants in a multilingual world.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Plurilingual Pedagogies in Language Education publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in plurilingual pedagogies in language education across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Plurilingualism: The capacity to mobilise and orchestrate multiple languages fluidly within an individual’s communicative repertoire.

Plurilingual Pedagogies: Teaching approaches that design tasks and interactions to harness learners’ entire linguistic resources and promote mediation and translanguaging.

Mediation: The facilitation of understanding and communication through the strategic use of linguistic and cultural resources by learners or educators.

Translanguaging: The process of alternating between languages within a communicative event to support comprehension, learning and creative expression.

References

1. Decolonizing language learning in digital environments through the voices of plurilingual learners in the Global South. Applied Linguistics (2024).
2. Structural Analysis of Pedagogic Mediation in a Foreign Language Classroom. Education Sciences (2024).
3. “We are all (potential) plurilinguals”: Plurilingualism as an Overarching, Holistic Concept. OLBI Journal (2020).
4. A Music-Mediated Language Learning Experience: Students’ Awareness of Their Socio-Emotional Skills. Frontiers in Psychology (2019).