Translanguaging as a decolonising approach: students’ perspectives towards integrating Indigenous epistemology in language teaching

2.1 Translanguaging as a decolonising approach

Translanguaging can be viewed as a new ontological orientation towards language and language use. It acknowledges the diversity and coexistence of all semiotic repertoires and criticises the hegemonic ideological regimes of monolingualism that serve nation-state interests (Leung and Valdés 2019; Li 2018; Li and Lin 2019; Otheguy et al. 2015). Translanguaging affirms multilingual speakers’ hybridised and cross-boundary linguistic repertoires (García and Li 2014) and recognises the complex, fluid, and permeable nature of languages (Toohey 2019; Turner and Lin 2020). Moreover, it rejects the normative colonial-era ideologies that project monolingualism as a universal standard for theorising languages. In the area of language education, translanguaging offers a theoretical foundation for challenging the rationale of “language x only” policies and beliefs (Li 2018) and the underlying logic of bi-/multilingual immersion programmes (Wang 2020) where the purist monolingual view of languages is often deemed more effective and professional and shuttling between languages is often strictly prohibited or frowned upon (Kramsch 2019). To disrupt these artificial and ideological boundaries, many studies have used translanguaging to validate a plurilingual and liberating view of languages and language teaching (e.g., García et al. 2017). Over the past decade, numerous studies have thus illustrated how translanguaging can enhance pedagogical practices in many educational contexts where monolingualism has been normalised through untenable assumptions concerning language learning (Cenoz and Gorter 2021; García and Li 2014).

In this study, I seek to advance the field of translanguaging research by defining translanguaging as a decolonising approach in language teaching. This is an empirical response to Li and García’s (2022: 2) call to view translanguaging as a decolonising project that can “undo the process through which the knowledge base and linguistic/cultural practices of colonised people was obliterated”. In recent years, researchers in language education have started to explore how to use a decolonial approach to address the root problems that have shaped and maintained the imperial and colonial view of languages as products of colonialism with distinct boundaries. Many applied linguists have engaged in critiquing the perceived universality and centrality of Western knowledge in language education (Canagarajah 2022; Kramsch 2019; Phipps 2019; Reagan and Osborn 2019). That is, they have challenged the predominant Eurocentric knowledge system in language teaching and made a clarion call to harness decolonial creativity to enable the harmonious coexistence of different worldviews and bodies of knowledge in a curriculum, a discipline or even an educational system (Hokowhitu et al. 2020; Wang 2023).

Decoloniality can be understood as activity that makes visible the invisible, unmuting the muted. It is an attempt to find new ways to combat the effects of Western imperialism (Mignolo and Walsh 2018). Decoloniality suggests that “even in the absence of colonial governments, many people across the globe continue to suffer from colonial relationships in and with the West” (Criser and Malakaj 2020: 85). In contemporary research on decoloniality, this term is often used as an epistemological frame that requires delinking from the colonial mentality that projects monolingualism as the norm. According to Canagarajah (2022: 453), delinking is a process that “leads to decolonial epistemic shift and brings to the foreground other epistemologies, other principles of knowledge and understanding”. Essentially a decolonising project, translanguaging enables transformative praxis to provide a liberatory voice that valorises pride in students’ identities as multilingual speakers (García and Li 2014). It also opens a window on the coexistence of alternate ways of thinking and being (Meighan 2020). García and Leiva (2014: 211) argue that translanguaging in the classroom concerns “bringing into the open the often-concealed exchanges among people and releasing subjugated histories” rather than simply learning a new way of doing and being via one’s linguistic resources. Using ubuntu, a concept based on an African value system, Makalela (2019) discusses a valuable case of integrating a place-based worldview that exemplifies translanguaging as a regime for transformative practices when enhancing multilingual students’ epistemic access and identity position. The concept of ubuntu can be interpreted as “I am because you are” in African knowledge systems, providing a philosophical basis that implies people are interdependent and that “languages are interwoven in a system of infinite dependent relations” (Makalela 2019: 238). Hence, this example indicates that although translanguaging appears to be a new invention of recent decades, it corresponds to the Indigenous epistemologies and worldviews among peoples and cultures in the Global South.

More discussions and explorations are therefore needed to expand the knowledge on translanguaging as a decolonising project. Recently, a journal has dedicated a special issue (Ndlangamandla and Chaka 2020) to the role of translanguaging in Indigenous education and its transformative potential, from the perspective of decoloniality, to facilitate more “pluriversal epistemologies and practices” (Canagarajah 2022: 1). Accordingly, translanguaging has been shown to serve as an epistemological tool for all students, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, or gender, to access learning not only through colonial and imperial languages and knowledge systems but also those of colonised and oppressed peoples. By doing so, students have opportunities to access and build “webs-of-understanding” (Bagga-Gupta 2017: 106). Nevertheless, as Canagarajah (2022: 27) argues, “policy-makers and teachers in the Global North fear that diversity leads to disharmony and unintelligibility” (Canagarajah 2022: 27), which can unsettle the “colonial matrix of power”. However, in the literature on translanguaging and decoloniality, there is a lack of discussions on the intersection of translanguaging, decoloniality, and the Global South (Ndlangamandla and Chaka 2020). More research thus needs to be performed to reveal “to what extent translanguaging theory is embedded in decoloniality” (Chaka 2020: 33). Overall, then, the transformative potential of translanguaging in Indigenous language and culture revitalisation, language education, and sociolinguistics remains underexplored and undertheorised (Makalela 2019).

2.2 Decolonising additional language teaching: a Chinese case

Chinese language teaching has been frequently criticised for being “unmodern” or “not Westernised” among students in Western countries (e.g., Moloney 2013). Chinese pedagogies are described as outdated and somewhat inadaptable to the Western context, causing student demotivation, disengagement, and discomfort, hindering students from becoming proficient in Chinese within a similar timeframe needed for European language proficiency.

I argue that this research orientation that deems Chinese teaching insufficiently “Westernised” is problematic in two ways. First, it indicates a binary view of the world as either Western or non-Western, modern or unmodern, implying the Western and modern are superior to the non-Western and unmodern. To comply with the colonial perspective in applied linguistics research, many scholars have focused on identifying the “problems” in Chinese teaching, how far it lags English teaching, and how to use Western approaches to fix these problems (Gong et al. 2020). There has been little interest in exploring the value of traditional Chinese methods or an inclusive or integrated model that acknowledges the coexistence of both Western and Chinese teaching approaches. Another concern with the binary view is based on its overgeneralisation of the concept of “Western” countries, which treats all English-speaking countries as a homogenous group in which only Anglophone cultures are visible and foregrounded, eliding all the diverse local knowledge and value systems many migrants and minority groups speaking languages other than English have contributed. As Toohey and Smythe (2021) argue, such binary thinking is particularly inequitable in settler colonial states where Indigenous peoples’ ways of being and thinking are rarely taken into consideration in any research conducted in so-called Western countries.

A significant turn in Chinese pedagogical research and development followed the introduction of the total immersion approach in the 1990s. Here, a group of scholars introduced the American Middlebury Model into Chinese language teaching as the most innovative pedagogy that could ensure that students learn more effectively in an absolute monolingual environment (Wang 2014). Thus, over the past two decades, numerous Mandarin immersion programmes have been established across K–12 in the United States and many other parts of the world. To attract more Western students to study in China, many Chinese universities have normalised monolingual ideology’s role as the overarching principle in pedagogy and policy development as well as language teacher training (Wang 2015). Indeed, some of today’s Mandarin immersion programmes still require students to pledge that no other languages except the target language will be used. Taking a critical perspective, Wang (2020) has noted a significant gap between the monolingual policy implemented in Chinese language programmes and the reality of classroom interaction, which involves the use of a great variety of semiotic resources by both teachers and students to obtain a deeper level of understanding of the ecological environment of a target language. The rigid monolingual mindset that has developed over time in Chinese teaching has thus prevented teachers from having meaningful dialogue with their students on real-life topics, especially during the initial stage of Chinese instruction. This has also limited teachers’ ability to explore transformative pedagogies by imaginatively drawing from various epistemological frameworks (Toohey 2019), i.e., to unlock the potential of Chinese language pedagogies to bring innovative contributions to applied linguistics. Accordingly, I argue that a decolonial perspective is urgently needed to dismantle the monoglossic ideology in additional language teaching and allow more transformative and sustainable pedagogies to merge by offering equal space and respect for place-based knowledge, in contrast to simply attempting to crack into the Anglocentric world (Wang 2021).

2.3 Integrating Indigenous epistemologies

In recent decades, Indigenous knowledge has been successfully applied in science, health care, agriculture, education and many more fields by communities and governments in Africa, South America, and Asia (Boven and Morohashi 2002; Zidny et al. 2020). Meanwhile, these successful cases have shown that decolonisation cannot be performed by Indigenous groups alone. For Indigenous knowledge to be promoted and used in the educational system for transformative praxis (Freire 2017), concerted efforts involving governments, community organisations, media, academia, researchers, and curriculum developers are needed.

Indigenous epistemology is a term that is used internationally to denote any knowledge traditionally held by Indigenous peoples and communities. Mātauranga Māori is one such body of knowledge in Aotearoa New Zealand. It comprises the traditions, values, concepts, philosophies, worldviews and understandings that derive from uniquely Māori cultural points of view. Scholars of Māori ancestry have forcefully argued that protecting mātauranga Māori is integral for contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand, where biculturalism lies at the centre of its social and educational organisations. As a national-level effort, the goal of integrating Indigenous epistemology into the educational system is to unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge, resources and people to help New Zealanders create a more inclusive country. The last decade thus witnessed many initiatives in the public sector to integrate Māori epistemology as guiding principles into innovation, sustainability, and development efforts.

The Indigenous language of New Zealand, the Māori language, is one of the most well-known languages that is classified as endangered. Via revitalisation efforts that started in the early 1980s, initiatives such as “language nests” have successfully improved the social status of the Māori language in society and inspired other Indigenous revitalisation projects worldwide (King 2018). Using corpus linguistics methods, Calude et al. (2020) reveal a strong presence of Māori words in recent science-related national web content. They argue that the use of Māori words in science content functions as a national identity building tool, used by authors to signal the growing cultural awareness of Māori traditions and concepts among academics, scientists, teachers, and professionals in educational settings. Māori words such as Aotearoa (New Zealand), hui (meeting), kai (food), kōrero (talk or talking), and aroha (empathy or love) frequently appear in New Zealand English without a translation (Wenman 2020). It is not only unusual for a dominant language to borrow words from an Indigenous language but even more rare for them to be integrated to fill lexical gaps in English to denote similar concepts in regards to Māori epistemology and cultural traditions. The coexistence of English and Māori words in media and official documents therefore signifies a unique place-based translanguaging practice. Using Te Whāriki, the national curriculum for early childhood education as an example, Wang (2021) has illustrated how such translanguaging involving Māori words and epistemology has been normalised in New Zealand’s educational sector and how this decolonising translanguaging can facilitate the application of Indigenous knowledge in formal knowledge that used to be described only in English.

Central to Māori epistemology is whanaungatanga, i.e., an extended family-like relationship, a relationship that through shared experiences and working together provides people with a sense of belonging. For Māori people, whānau or family is the most important relationship in the world. Bishop et al. (2014) have demonstrated the centrality of whanaungatanga in learning and its positive impact on attendance, engagement, and achievement using large-scale research involving 1,263 teachers. This concept refers to the relationships among people, their relationships with the environment, and the relationships between people and the nonphysical spiritual world—all are based on shared experiences. Both Indigenous ontology and the posthuman perspective thus emphasise a relational worldview in which objects depend on others rather than existing independently from others. Hence, Toohey and Smythe (2021) have argued that a decolonising approach should be applied to challenge the monolingual mindset in language education.

In New Zealand, even though many classroom teachers have spontaneously used Māori language and cultural concepts in their everyday teaching practices, little research has examined students’ attitudes, especially in the dominant educational context. Therefore, the aim of this study is to answer three research questions: What are students’ perspectives towards (1) translanguaging and (2) embedding Indigenous worldviews in an additional language course? (3) How is translanguaging enacted in an assessment that embeds Indigenous epistemologies?

3.1 Research context

This study was conducted in the New Zealand higher education context. In 2019, a faculty-wide pilot project named Ako Arts was launched to encourage course directors and teaching staff to explore transformative ways to embed Māori cultures and principles into curriculum design and classroom teaching. This project highlighted the reciprocal relationship between teaching and learning while building equal and mutual relationships between teachers and students. Beginning in 2019, as the course director of a large year-one language course, I started to explore Māori language and cultural concepts as an observer of the Ako Arts project. In 2020, the focal university launched a new strategic plan (2020–2030) using a Māori language title—Taumata Teitei, which can be interpreted in English as “pursuing excellence, despite uncertainty”. One key priority for the university’s future is to incorporate mātauranga Māori into its curriculum. Based on my prior involvement in the Ako Arts project and following consultation with Māori experts, I made my first decolonising attempt to embed mātauranga Māori in my course and conducted a survey of students. Phipps (2019: 5) has suggested that this requires “people who are able to embark on such a journey and return with tales to tell of what happens when decolonising is attempted in foreign languages learning”. To share my experiences with a wider audience, I wrote this article.

This study was conducted in a Mandarin Chinese programme at the research site. This Chinese language programme has been the largest university-level Chinese programme for European students curious about China since it was founded after the Second World War. At the research site, additional language teaching is organised under rigorous learning standards, entailing proficiency acquisition is the major learning outcome. The curriculum aligns with the Common European Framework of References for Languages. Language acquisition courses at the focal university are fast-paced, proficiency-driven, and exam-focused.

3.2 Participants

The participants involved in this study were 155 students in a beginning Chinese course. A total of 83.9% of the focal group’s students were aged between 17 and 21 years. There were slightly more female students (52.3%) than male students (45.2%). The two major student groups were Asian (61.3%) and European (28.4%). A total of 3.2% of students identified themselves as Māori and Pasifika. Despite these diverse ethnic backgrounds, 74.8% of students reported speaking English as their first language. Over half (51.6%) of the participants were first-year university students. Regarding their prior exposure to Indigenous language and culture in New Zealand, 42.4% reported that their schools emphasised Māori language and culture, while 48.9% felt their schools did not emphasise Māori cultures. A total of 8.7% of students were international students with limited exposure to Māori culture before enrolling at the university.

3.3 Data collection and analysis

The data were collected and analysed in the following steps: Two weeks before the new semester began, I published the course on Canvas and instructed my students to familiarise themselves with the course content and assessment details, integrating Indigenous language and culture in the syllabus. One week before teaching began, I invited students to participate in a precourse briefing session where I introduced why and how Māori epistemology was embedded into the course. After this introductory session, I organised a focused group interview with 12 students who volunteered to share their understanding of and perspective on embedding Māori epistemology in the course. The focused group interview lasted 1.5 h. I then immediately analysed the meeting notes and developed a survey of 10 questions. The questionnaire (see Table 1) includes three sections—students’ prior knowledge of Indigenous language and culture (3 questions), their attitudes towards integrating Indigenous worldviews (4 questions), and their attitudes towards language use (2 questions). The questionnaire was designed using a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 indicating strongly disagree and 5 strongly agree. At the end of the second week, once open enrolment was officially closed, this anonymous questionnaire was released on Canvas to all 161 students enrolled in the course. In total, 155 students returned responses. The return rate was thus 96.3%. In addition to the survey results, the data I evaluated in this study included students’ learning evidence and their reflections on a graded assessment that required them to produce a video project.

5.1 Students’ perspectives

The survey data show that students had an adequate level of awareness and understanding of the Indigenous language and culture. Table 1 shows that most students claimed they were familiar with basic Māori words (Q1), although many acknowledged they could not speak the Māori language (Q2). Students’ prior knowledge the true history of New Zealand and its relationship with Indigenous people provided the basis for embedding Māori concepts—using equivalent Māori terms—directly in the assessment descriptions, which students normally read more carefully to acquire an accurate understanding of the requirements. The results (Q3) indicate that half of the students were familiar with Indigenous culture, and that this familiarity more or less corresponded to their schooling background. The finding that students have some awareness of New Zealand, as a bicultural country, can help guide progressive scholars and teachers to further explore how to use translanguaging approaches to promote the coexistence of different bodies of knowledge.

The second section of the survey results shows that most students embraced the idea of integrating Indigenous knowledge into this additional language course (Q4), demonstrating their high level of acceptance of pluriversal epistemologies in this higher education context. In particular, students found that integrating Māori concepts had transformed the course, rendering it more locally relevant and respected. Students tended to believe that the use of Māori language and culture increased the authenticity of the course via its efforts to revitalise Indigenous language and cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand (Q5). Almost all students agreed with the principle of whanaungatanga, i.e., the Māori concepts used in the assessment description (Q6). Regarding the intersection of Chinese and Māori cultures, their perspectives were neutral (Q7), indicating that students need more information to connect different cultures and value systems cohesively in such a course. Similarly, the results of Q8 show that students viewed language learning as a competency-driven task. They did not see how embedding Maori epistemology could lead to proficiency gain. Māori words and culture in a language course were viewed more as learning context than learning content. This was probably because a Māori concept was used as the guiding principle of the assessment, not as content tested in the assessment itself. That is, since their macro neocolonial higher education context continuously emphasised exam-driven learning, these students had been educated to uphold an instrumentalist view of language learning (Kramsch 2019; Kubota 2016).

The last section of the questionnaire revealed students’ negative attitudes towards the “x language only” ideology (Q9) and the purist view of language use (Q10). These results revealed that the students who were positive about translanguaging might be more open to translingual practices in the formal language learning environment.

5.2 Students’ vlogs and reflections

Students’ vlogs demonstrated that a trans-semiotic stance was naturally enacted in their digital products. Their translanguaging practices appeared natural and purposeful. It is thus clear that the translanguaging design in the assessment not only expanded students’ opportunities to maximise their efforts in demonstrating their learning achievements but also opened spaces for them to show their respect and love for their families by directly involving them in their university projects. Figure 3 is a screenshot from a student’s vlog. When introducing her family, the student contextualised her story with Māori epistemology.

Figure 3:

Screenshot of a student’s translanguaging practice.

This student’s video screenshot might appear to be “codeswitching” in a teacher’s view, but it is a good example that illustrates how translanguaging was enacted between the named languages (Chinese and Maori) to enable a localised worldview when learning an additional language. It demonstrates how New Zealand’s Indigenous language and philosophies can travel through the porous boundaries of named languages to enable a pluriversal worldview in language teaching.

Finally, students’ reflection reports explained how this project helped them reflect on their relationships with their families by involving them directly in their university studies. Their reports showed how this project deepened their understanding of families in different cultures while learning Chinese as an additional language. During this project, some students played a “teacher’s” role, mobilising their entire repertoire to teach their family basic greeting words to make their vlog more engaging for their audience. For example, one student wrote that

My family and I thought that doing this project was a good experience in terms of learning and reminiscing about family memories, and we enjoyed it. And, I had a great time teaching Chinese to my family, little by little : ).

Students obtained their family’s consent before filming and then used their home language to engage their parents, grandparents, siblings or extended family in their video by teaching them to say nǐ hǎo or a Chinese kinship term that describes their relationship. Students appreciated the opportunity to involve their family in their university life.

Furthermore, students reported that they had reflected on the similarities and differences among the cultures behind the named languages. Students observed that Chinese and the Indigenous culture emphasise genealogy and family ties. When using Chinese, one’s family name is placed before one’s given name(s) to honour one’s ancestors; Māori self-introduction follows a similar structure but highlights the natural world, e.g., a mountain or river where one’s ancestors grew up. For example, as one student shared,

Chinese and Māori language/culture have a strong emphasis on roots and relationships. In a mihi/pepeha, you share your origins. The surname is said first in Chinese; thus, both show a person’s roots. Whanaungatanga/关系* is vital for family and business relationships. In contrast, English lacks any emphasis on roots or relationships. (*关系, guānxi, relationship)

In terms of students’ submitted vlogs, these showed their strong understanding of Chinese kinship terms and sentence structures related to introducing family members’ name, work, and nationality. Having their family directly involved in this filming made them more careful to accurately use kinship terms to convey the correct meaning.