Liberating Language Education

This book responds to a growing body of work in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics that places an emphasis on situated descriptions of language education practices and illuminates how these descriptions are enmeshed with local, institutional and wider social forces. It engages with new ways of understanding language that expand its meaning by including other semiotic resources and meaning-making practices and bring to the fore its messiness and unpredictability. The chapters illustrate how a translingual and transcultural orientation to language and language pedagogy can provide a point of entry to reimagining what language education might look like under conditions of heightened linguistic and cultural diversity and increased linguistic and social inequalities. The book unites an international group of contributors, presenting state-of-the-art empirical studies drawing on a wide range of local contexts and spaces, from linguistically and culturally heterogeneous mainstream and HE classrooms to complementary (community) school and informal language learning contexts.

Vally Lytra: Dr Vally Lytra is Reader in Languages in Education and PGR Convener at the Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. She researches multilingualism in homes, schools and communities that have experienced diverse migration flows. Her new edited book ‘Liberating Language Education’ (Multilingual Matters) will be published in February 2022.

Cristina Ros i Solé is Lecturer in Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London. She writes about identity, subjectivity and the everyday in intercultural communication drawing on philosophy, cultural studies and sociolinguistics. She has written several language textbooks and books on language education. Some highlights are: Mobility and Localisation in Language Learning (Peter Lang, 2011), The Personal World of the Language Learner (Palgrave, 2016), and currently writing Language Collections: Living interculturality with everyday objects (Routledge 2022).

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Jim Anderson is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work focuses on: theories and methods of second language learning and bilingualism, including Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); multilingualism and new literacies; and language policy. Underlying this is a commitment to an integrated and inclusive approach to language and literacy education incorporating the areas of foreign and community/heritage language learning as well as English as an Additional Language and English mother tongue. Jim is co-director with Dr Vicky Macleroy of the Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project launched in 2012.

Vicky Macleroy is Reader in Education and Head of the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her research interests focus on language development and multilingualism, multiliteracies and digital storytelling, and transformative pedagogy.