Book Review: From Translanguaging Pedagogy to Classroom Pedagogy:

Supporting Literacy, Communication and Cooperative

Creativity of Students (Author: Isaak Papadopoulos)

by

Dr John Siolas

Associate Professor of Greek Language Education

St. John’s University, U.S.A. and

Visiting Professor at University of Athens under the AS Onassis Foundation

The book titled “From translanguaging pedagogy to classroom pedagogy: supporting literacy, communication and cooperative creativity of students” has been a monograph produced by Dr Isaak Papadopoulos. It is a book which attempted to connect the way translanguaging contributes to enhancing communication and creativity in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Isaak Papadopoulos has been a researcher in the field of Teaching Methodology for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms and has taught in various universities in Europe

Dr. Isaak Papadopoulos

The first chapter of the book is devoted to the context of translanguaging. At first, a critical and reflective review of terms related to “translanguaging” was made, a fact which facilitates readers’ understanding of the term. The way the definitions are presented introduces the readers to the concept of translanguaging and he/she can acquire an awareness of its origin and further development. Especially, when it comes to the differentiations between translanguaging and code-switching, the use of secondary sources which pre-requires the study of a great number of studies and scholars leads the reader to a clear context of translanguaging. Moreover, this first chapter includes sub-unites which refer to the benefits derived from translanguaging as well as the relationship between translanguaging and creative/critical thinking. This gradual development of the context is very helpful as even a reader without any knowledge about translanguaging can clearly understand the context and its significance. Last, in the chapter the author examines various challenges which are related to translanguaging especially regarding the challenges in the school/education context. What would be a nice adding in this chapter is a description of the use of translanguaging in other countries so that the readers could study international practices.

The second chapter focuses on intercultural communication in the school of languages and cultures and it is one of the strongest chapters of the book. The reader – obviously, greatly experiences in such issues of interculturalism- managed to introduce readers to the context of intercultural communication, passing from communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence. The author analysed his own model of defining intercultural communicative competence which stress the intercultural sensitivity, intercultural awareness, intercultural cooperation/interaction as important axes. In particular, he has successfully described the developmental phases of raising intercultural sensitivity and awareness which are not very known to people or teachers of multicultural classrooms while regarding the intercultural cooperation/interaction, the piece of information can serve as a guide for teachers or/and researchers. A most important component of this chapter is the analysis of communication strategies focusing on the two most-known criteria of defining the strategies: a) the problem and b) the awareness which are analysed with a great piece of information and various proposal for further teaching practices follow. Although various examples have been described and findings from studies are analysed, a reference to differentiations between girls and boys in the use of communication strategies could be an interesting adding.

In the third chapter, the author attempted to investigate the way and extent to which translanguaging use in multicultural and multilingual classrooms contributes to enhancing intercultural communication. With an extremely large sample of students and teachers, he made use of various research instruments like a) interviews, b) questionnaires, c) focused observation and d) workshop sheets in an attempt to delve into the translanguaging context in Greek primary education. It was shown that translanguaging use allows students to experiment language use, encourages students to explore components of other languages and cultures, they tend to feel closer to other students, to be curious about their languages and their cultural background. A very important aspect in this chapter is the fact that students feel motivated to use languages within this context, L1s are promoted in the classroom and not neglected as it happened in the past. I think that this is a very encouraging study as it seems that translanguaging was researched in practice and not theoretically.

A very good point that made me positively surprised is the fact that the questionnaire that was designed by the researcher/author is very detailed and it covers the most important aspects of translanguaging and intercultural communication focusing on the reason for translanguaging use, the way translanguaging encourages students to raise their awareness of other languages and cultures, the feelings of students regarding the languages and cultures of other people in a translanguaging context and the educational implications.

Regarding the part of the teachers, the most interesting point is their involvement in the study having to complete specifically designed workshop sheets which referred to their perspectives but most significantly to their practices to promote translanguaging in their classrooms and to encourage students to use all their linguistic resources. It seems that teachers are too busy to deal with such research tasks and based on my experience, I can say that it is quite difficult to place teachers at a research activity easily, thus I am quite satisfied that so many teachers participated, guessing that the author/researcher would have to be patient in that.

The chapter four causes many surprises to the readers as it is related to teaching methodology. At first, it was not a good surprise when started to read the book, as I thought that this chapter is out of the context. However, while reading the chapter and encountering the information of it, I felt that the author has successfully managed to connect translanguaging/intercultural communication to teaching practice in practice. Offering a detailed presentation about teaching and learning, teaching approach and methods, teaching strategies, techniques, and forms of teaching, he focuses on the teaching principles and aspects of lesson planning. So far, all these topics could be seen in a book of general teaching methodology. However, he went further by making use of all this piece of information and he provides readers with an amazingly detailed description of teaching methods and approaches that are used in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Starting for the very popular CLIL, he presents the pedagogical use of tales in the multicultural and multilingual classrooms in way that drives even the inexperienced teachers, researchers, or university student to the knowledge of the field. I do not know if there is any potential adding in this chapter. 

The fifth-last-chapter is devoted to the presentation of an education programme which aimed at promoting translanguaging use and enhancing their intercultural communication. The author has included ten thematic unites which are based on a country. It seems that he focused on countries of south-eastern Europe possibly because of the great amount of immigrant students from these countries in Greece. Apart from most of the activities, what is worth mentioning is that every teaching lesson/unit is analysed in detail which facilitates the readers’ understanding. The second very important point is that in every teaching lesson/unit, a different approach/method -from the ones presented in the previous chapter- is used or sometimes a combination of them is also used. The use of folktales is very interesting as they offer cultural information of a country while they tend to motivate the students. Supplementary activities for further implementation, extra experiential activities and photos are also provided and I could say that the programme and the chapter was excellent.

Having read this book many times, I can firmly say that every time I read it, I find something different to be attracted by. Researching on and dealing with translanguaging and multicultural/multilingual classrooms is not an easy task. It is my belief that this book is extremely helpful in many ways. It can be a great source of information/knowledge to many academic/researchers/colleagues who are interested in dealing with such contexts. They can find important and useful information from theoretical and methodological perspective. This book can be also a great tool for university students. The way it is unfolded facilitates the introduction to notions and contexts which may be unknown to some people or to most of the university students. Especially, the connection between the theory of translanguaging and interculturalism and the teaching practice at school with teaching lessons and activities can be of great help to students but to new teachers as well.

Although I can speak Greek, teaching Greek as a Second Language at the university, I would be really pleased to see this book translated into English. I think that in this way, more readers would get it and more people would be benefitted. Being published in the Greek language is very important as it is the main context of the book, but I think that such issues like translanguaging, interculturalism, multicultural and multilingual classrooms should be promoted to other countries as well. As a young researcher, Dr Isaak Papadopoulos should carefully consider the editing of the book in English so that his work can travel to other countries or continents.

Finally, I am very satisfied with the content of the book. I think that the author has made an excellent job, he tried quite hard not only to write and focus on theoretical aspects of translanguaging, but he also researched on it practically. I would recommend this book to our colleagues and I would also invite them to encourage young researchers to contribute. It is very important to understand that young researchers are and will be our next academic generation.

References

Papadopoulos, I. (2020). From translanguaging pedagogy to classroom pedagogy: supporting literacy, communication, and cooperative creativity of students. Thessaloniki: Disigma Publication