On-going projects
Curious about how translanguaging differs from mixing languages?
In this video, Julie Choi (ARTP Lab Leading Researcher) shares her translanguaging practice, embedded in both her teaching and research with students and participants. This resource is designed to spark meaningful discussions among learners and educators of all ages, and to inspire students to launch their own research inquiries. Enjoy exploring this dynamic approach to multilingual communication!
Please acknowledge this video if you use it as a resource in your academic or teaching work:
ARTP in Action. (2025, August). Translanguaging explained: More than just mixing languages [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskxgNlsp0s
Breaking deficit views through a “language as resource” orientation: One teacher’s journey of shifting lenses
Despite the centrality of multilingual realities today in Australian classrooms, the dominance of the monolingual mindset continues to see teachers view students’ linguistic resources being viewed as a ‘problem’ rather than a ‘resource’ for learning (French, 2016; Ollerhead, 2019 and Turner et al., 2022). In this poster presentation, Julie and early career teacher Catriona Vo trace Catriona’s 7-year journey across her initial teacher education and early career teaching period to explore the value of the ‘language as resource’ (LAR) (Ruiz, 1984) orientation and how this was developed in a monolingual institutional space. Our findings show the transformative power of teacher educators sustaining collaboration beyond the initial teacher education period with teachers. These collaborations can create humanizing spaces that allow for the questioning of deficit views, realisations of agency to do transformative work in the classroom and the development of practical approaches to implementing LAR.
There’s only so much that can be put in a poster. Hear Cat speak about her journey in greater detail:
https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/qRNxCOMxAksNAmNLyikilHGBrpg?domain=youtube.com
This project has also been published as a journal article. You can access the paper version here:
Note: Please follow the instructions step by step by first clicking the unmute button.
Stay tuned everyone for Julie’s first-ever picture book written for anyone who is looking for linguistically and culturally sustaining texts!
Developing a ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP) exploring Plurilingual Resourcefulness with Staff in Language and Literacies Education Academic Group
Along with our community collaborations, we are also collaborating internally within our university with staff in the Languages and Literacies Education Academic Group. What started as small group monthly research discussions, is now becoming a ‘community of practice’ (CoP) that aims to learn more about our own plurilingual resources and how we can help each other bring our resources to our respective classroom contexts. Our discussions motivate us to collaborate on faculty presentations where we created a poster about how we came together to learn about each other’s plurilingual resources (see our developing timeline). We are continuing to see many possibilities for future scholarly activities in this space.
Stay tuned for our article on what we learned from our CoP discussions and how we are building in activities in our classrooms that are having transformative effects on teaching and learning!
Mobilising EAL learners’ cultural and linguistic resources through content and language integrated pedagogy
Leveraging EAL learners’ diverse cultural and linguistic resources facilitates and fosters their learning process, cultural competencies, agency, autonomy, and identities to bring their “whole sel[ves] into the classroom” (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 353). This project aims to develop EAL teachers’ capacity to explicitly and consistently integrate their learners’ diverse cultural and linguistic resources into their lesson/unit planning and delivery by drawing on the 4Cs (Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture) framework within Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) pedagogy (Coyle et al., 2010) and Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy (ARTP).
With the aim to enhance EAL teachers’ ability to integrate their learners’ diverse resources into lesson planning and delivery, we have so far found how the use of the 4Cs framework within CLIL pedagogy and Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy (ARTP) can support teachers to create a more inclusive and effective learning environment. For example, we have seen how the teachers scaffolded their learning in relation to the 4Cs framework:
- Content: The primary content was the science of plant growth. Students learned about seeds, roots, stems, leaves, and flowers, gaining knowledge about the stages of plant development.
- Communication: Students practised their language skills by writing descriptions, labelling diagrams, and explaining processes in their book. This helped them improve their vocabulary, grammar, and overall language proficiency
- Cognition: Students were encouraged/challenged to develop and use higher-order thinking skills. For example, students analysed the stages of plant growth, synthesised information from various sources, and created their own explanations and illustrations.
- Culture: By incorporating their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, students enriched the learning experience for themselves and their peers. They shared how plants were grown in their home countries or regions, connecting science with geography and cultural aspects.
We have found that by combining CLIL and ARTP, teachers were able to create a translanguaging space where students were allowed and encouraged to bring their “whole selves” into the classroom. In such a space, students were able to draw on and leverage their unique cultural and linguistic resources and experiences, express their identities, and engage in meaningful, hands-on learning, such as creating an 8-page book, thus fostering their cultural competencies, agency, autonomy, and identities, as suggested by Ladson-Billings (2021).
Designing teaching and learning approaches to EAL writing using Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
In many senior secondary school contexts, the dominant mechanical approach towards academic writing often guides EAL students in ways that memorize or reproduce formulaic structures rather than engage in criticality and their own voice in writing. Consequently, writing becomes a practice of memorization and regurgitation rather than a transformative process of thinking, meaning-making, exploration and discovery for students. To steer towards a more diverse and inclusive teaching framework, this project aims to draw on Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) (Ladson-Billings 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014; Morrison et al., 2022) and Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy (ARTP) to develop pedagogies and principles that enhance EAL students’ performance and engagement of their authoritative and critical voices in academic writing.
From Script to Stage: A Year 10 EAL Student’s Creative Transformation
Blending film study and dramatic arts, Year 10 EAL students dove deep into the film Billy Elliot, bringing its characters to life through memorized monologues that challenged and transformed them. One student’s journey stands out brilliantly. His self-authored guide in an 8-page book which he entitled, “Everything about Performing,” is not just a demonstration of his technical mastery of dramatic space, but a blossoming confidence that leaps off every page. Through carefully crafted tips and personal insights, he’s evolved from student to mentor, sharing hard-won wisdom with future performers. But the real revelation is in his playful, energetic voice which emerged through this hands-on approach to learning. As he puts it, this “open” and “fun” experience didn’t just teach him – it helped him “go through the knowledge again and improve [his] whole understanding.” The result is “perfect and fantastic” – not just in his words, but in the tangible growth we’ve witnessed. Such works showcase how merging creative expression with language learning can unlock students’ full potential, creating confident communicators who excel both on stage and on paper.
FlexAP Online/Blended Stream Project: Empowering Languages and TESOL Students
This project exemplifies University of Melbourne’s commitment to fostering productive collaborative relationships, scholarly mindsets, ongoing improvement, and high-quality educational experiences with active engagement from both staff and students (Framework for Educational Excellence). Led by Yvette Slaughter, Julie Choi, and Shu Ohki, the project built on their long-term research initiatives into plurilingual pedagogies in Australian schools, and partnerships with the Department of Education, alumni and lead teachers, teacher candidates, academic experts as well as artists. Plurilingual pedagogies seek to acknowledge the linguistic and cultural diversity of learners, and the role of lived experiences and knowledges in shaping meaning making, teaching and learning, and identity development. The co-development and implementation of a rich range of sustainable, inclusive and shared resources across the areas of TESOL and languages education, has helped bridge an artificial separation of fields typically witnessed in other Australian universities. This approach has led to the development of inclusive and dynamic teaching and learning spaces co-built by students, academics, alumni and stakeholders, underpinned by a cohesive approach to pedagogy and shared theoretical understandings.
Publishing in the margins: Investigating arts-rich book-making as a tool to build critical language awareness
Funded by the Dyason Fellowship, this project marks beginning of a collaboration between scholars at the University of Melbourne and Texas State University. Our shared research focus is marginalised multilingual children’s writing and publishing through arts-rich practices and the implications for multilingual literacy development. Beginning with a visit to Texas in November this year, Associate Professor Julie Choi and Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens will work in collaboration with Professor Jesse Gainer from TSU, presenting our current findings at the NCTE conference in Boston and working together to develop innovative ways to harness arts-rich bookmaking practices to support multilingual language and literacy learning. Professor Gainer is a leading scholar in the field, working with children from marginalised communities across the US, Peru, Mexico, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina to write and publish their stories.
