1

RUNNING HEAD: Diversity Study

Room for Diversity: Translanguaging and

Multiculturalism In the Classroom

Laura Colville

EDUC 606 Dr. Gayle

University of Pennsylvania

February 20, 2022

 2
Diversity Study

Position:

Gutierrez’s (2008) notion of Third Space is an invisible area cultivated for candid

dialogue between educators and students. I propose for this space to be seen as the underlying

sanctuary in which classroom culture is contained and developed. The culture of a classroom

can either continue to foster or ultimately kill student motivation (Kohn, 2010). As such,

students’ cultures must be seen and represented in the classroom culture. This is

multiculturalism. Gibson (1976) states the goal for multiculturalism is to, “promote competence”

across cultural boundaries, providing context and a window into a culture that may be unfamiliar

(p. 16). For multiculturalism to be employed within the classroom, educators must see language

as an integral part of culture, encourage representational access points encouraged within

secondary discourses, and integrate translanguaging practices into school literacy practices.

Language:

Language is an integral part of culture, as supported by Villegas (2010) advocating that

“language is not merely a linguistic system but rather a cultural practice” (p. 307). Educators

must look at what language is valued within their classroom and the affected cultural capital that

students wield. Is it English-only practices, or is it a classroom culture built upon linguistic

pluralism (Villegas, 2010)?

English-only standards have excluded and provided a deficit-based welcome mat for

immigrants and emergent bilinguals. The English-only standards reach further than just the

immigrant and emergent bilingual populations, however. Kirkland (2010) describes the same

issue applying to students utilizing “English(es)” developed in the primary discourse (p. 293).

English(es) that go beyond the traditionally implemented “Standard English” in classrooms are

demonized, burning the bridge between home and school literacy practices, and orphaning all

cultures associated with languages beyond Standard English.

 3
Diversity Study

Cultural capital, regarding language, is built upon a monolithic view. What is valued is

Standardized English? Those that are native speakers have increasing cultural capital as

English is becoming normalized as the lingua franca. Tan (2021) states the hierarchy based on

cultural capital is entirely due to colonialism (p. 291). This hierarchy, mirroring middle-class

white traditional English, cultivates a vertical hegemonic structure in which native English

speakers are inherently better than emergent bilinguals. De los Rios argues that these English-

only standards stem from xenophobia (2017, p.59), contributing to cultural hegemony. As co-

constructors of the Third Space, educators should vehemently quell this prejudice in their

classroom culture through representation.

Representation:

Xenophobia discourages representational access points encouraged within secondary

discourses. Representation of cultures within the classroom should illuminate that which is

unfamiliar. Access points that allow for the mutual learning of culture, like translanguaging

practices and the inclusion of testimonios and counter-stories, disrupts the monolithic, English-

only narrative (Saavedra, 2019; Hughes-Hassell, 2013). Representation acts to level the

linguistic hegemonic structure and equally distributes the cultural capital native English

speakers and emergent bilinguals’ leverage.

The lack of representation brings detrimental effects. Anzaldúa (1987) claims that, “until I

can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (p. 39). This thinking leads to self-

doubt and what Nieto (2010) describes as “deculturalization”, an effect that “can result in the

failure to acknowledge the important role of culture may have in students’ values and behavior,

and consequently in their learning” (p. 64). Many researchers claim that the purpose of

American schools is entirely built upon assimilationist practices, ways in which to irradicate

home literacies and language replacing them with unwarranted secondary discourses that look

and act a lot like white, middle-class practices and English. Without representation of cultures,
 4
Diversity Study

specifically language, students lose sight of the purpose for their learning. Knowledge and

understanding become disjointed from reality. The absence of relevant learning results in a

vacuum for student motivation, a gap in which the development of classroom culture in the Third

Space is essential.

Classroom Structure:

Tangibly, representation can be achieved through the integration of language practices,

specifically translanguaging, set within the classroom. Much of the classroom framework is set

by the teacher before students even physically arrive in the classroom space. This is entirely

done so by their positionality regarding preconceived ideas about their students. There is a

known self-fulfilling prophecy, “when a false definition of a situation evokes a new behavior that

then makes the original false conception come true” (p. vii). In other words, a student’s

performance is heavily reliant on the teacher’s thoughts and expectations of that child

(Gadsden, 2009). We must remember, it is our jobs as teachers to co-create a space in which

our students see themselves as epistemological license holders (Campano, 2011). This starts

with how educators view their students.

Calkins (1994) makes a poignant argument: “environments [should be] deliberately kept

predicable and simple because the work at hand and the changing interactions around that work

are so unpredictable and complex” (p. 183). Noting that culture is always evolving and

changing, developing the classroom culture within the Third Space as reliable and consistent is

key. Students should know that the classroom is a safe space in which to share, be vulnerable,

and participate in engaging and culturally relevant pedagogy. Encouragement for

translanguaging opens a healthy rhetoric and norms for a classroom to run. It is a tangible way

to cultivate an inclusive multicultural environment integrated into the classroom structure.

Students are able to share and engage in conversations within a translanguaging classroom
 5
Diversity Study

structure, helping one another make meaning and learn from each other’s primary culture

through language and representation.

So What? Now What?

In order for multicultural education to work as a resistance against the status quo, Lee

states that, “students need to understand how they can be active agents of change” (2005, p.

127). This works through student voices, representation in sharing of primary literacies and

language, translanguaging as a standard in the classroom, and sustaining these practices

beyond the Third Space of classroom culture and into macro educational spaces. This view of

multicultural education hinges on a teacher’s ability to view students as possessing funds of

knowledge, ones that exhibit valuable experience, knowledge, and understanding from their

primary languages and discourses, and contributors to the classroom culture (Vélez-Ibáñez and

Greenberg, 1990; Moll, 1992).

The Third Space does not just exist. It is a construct, one that must be intentionally

constructed with teachers and students as co-collaborators. This Space has the potential to

disrupt the status quo and era of complacency as language and culture are still being thought of

as static. Multiculturalism provides a platform to resist “ethnocentrism and the unthinking

conviction that…the way things are is inevitable, natural, just, and best” (Delgado, 1989, p.

2439). A multicultural classroom values cultural pluralism and allows students leverage their

true cultural capital through their home language, literacies, and translanguaging practices.
 6
Diversity Study

References

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). How to tame a wild tongue. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza

(pp. 53-64). San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Campano, G., & Ghiso, M. P. (2011). Immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. In P.

Coates, P. Enciso, C. Jenkins & S. Wolf (Eds.), Handbook on research on children’s and

young adult literature (pp. 164-176). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

de los Ríos, C. V., & Seltzer, K. (2017). Translanguaging, coloniality, and English classrooms:

An exploration of two bicoastal urban classrooms. Research in the Teaching of English,

52(1), 55–76.

Delgado, Richard. 1989. “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative.”

Michigan Law Review Association 87 ð8Þ: 2411–41

Gadsden, V. L., Davis, J. E., & Artiles, A. J. (2009). Introduction: Risk, equity, and schooling:

Transforming the discourse. Review of research in education, 33(1), vii-xi.Calkins, L.

(1994). Chapter 11: Establish a predictable workshop environment. In The art of

teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a Sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research

Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164.

Hughes-Hassell. (2013). Multicultural young adult literature as a form of counter-storytelling.

Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83 (3), 212-228.

Kohn, A. (2010). How to create nonreaders: Reflections on motivation, learning, and sharing

power. English Journal, 100(1), 16–22.

Lee, S. (2005). Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth. New York:

Teachers College Press.

Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). ‘Funds of knowledge for teaching: using a

qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms’. Theory into Practice, 31,

pp.132-141.
 7
Diversity Study

Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities.

New York: Teachers College Press.

Saavedra, C. M. (2019). Inviting and valuing children’s knowledge through testimonios:

Centering “literacies from within” in the language arts curriculum. Language Arts, 96(3),

179-183.

Tan, A. (1999). Mother tongue. In S. Gillespie & R. Singleon (Eds.), Across cultures: A reader

for writers (pp. 26-31). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Vélez-Ibáñez C.G. and Greenberg J.B. (1990) Formation and transformation of funds of

knowledge among U.S. Mexican households in the context of the borderlands.

Villegas, K., Yin, P., & Gutiérrez, K. D. (2021). Interrogating Languaging Through Power, Race,

and Space in the Schooling of Translingual Student Populations. In Handbook of Urban

Education (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Moll, L. (2002) ‘The Concept

of Educational Sovereignty’,
Perspectives on
Moll, L. (2002) ‘The Concept
of Educational Sovereignty’,
Perspectives on