Tupas, Ruanni;
Paz, Rafael Michael O;
(2025)
Co-constructing multilingualism: decolonising knowledge in the production of a countertext.
Language Awareness
10.1080/09658416.2025.2556935.
(In press).
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Abstract
Much research has been done on decolonising education. However, we know little about what students do with decolonising knowledge if they are no longer within formal surveillance of teachers. This is one of a few studies that investigate students’ co-construction strategies in independent group work. Tasked to create a poster that aims to promote multilingualism, a group of undergraduate students from a Philippine university created a countertext through collaborative knowledge-making. This paper draws on mobilising a retrospection approach, framed as a way to privilege practice in theory-building. Materials produced for teaching and administrative purposes were re-examined as data through our research question: How do the students co-construct decolonising knowledge about multilingualism? Such knowledge in this context is best described as ‘decolonising’, meaning it is ever-transforming. We found that students co-constructed multilingualism as deeply linked to identity, as beneficial or disadvantageous to different groups of people, and as something that can mean the presence of local languages only. They did so through critical reflection, collaborative elaboration, and peer epistemic negotiation. Findings tell us that decolonising work in schools is an achievable goal, but the success depends on how much we have prepared students to critically engage with decolonisation and multilingualism.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Co-constructing multilingualism: decolonising knowledge in the production of a countertext |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09658416.2025.2556935 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2025.2556935 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Multilingualism; decoloniality; group work; co-construction; ELT |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214766 |
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