Reframing Education for Multilinguals

Honoring Students’ Linguistic, Literacy, and Cultural Assets

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29632

Keywords:

translanguaging, biliteracy, multiliteracy, assessment, emergent bilingual, teaching strategies

Abstract

Multilingual students enter classrooms with complex language, literacy, and cultural repertoires. Drawing on these repertoires, they use knowledge, skills, practices, and perspectives that make their language and literacy practices dynamic. This paper, based on a context review of educational policies and practices in the United States, as well as a literature review of transformative pedagogies, asserts the importance for teachers to honor and empower students’ use of dynamic practices to make and share meaning. To this end, and in order to help reframe education for multilinguals, in this paper we provide strategies to help foster students’ multilingualism, multiliteracies, and multiculturalism.

Author Biographies

Dr. Marium Abugasea Heidt, SUNY Brockport

Dr. Marium Abugasea Heidt is an associate professor of TESOL in the Department of Education and Human Development at SUNY Brockport where she is program coordinator for the TESOL and Bilingual Education programs, teaching courses in TESOL and Bilingual Education. She is a former middle school German teacher and former ESOL teacher with various K-16 ESOL teaching experiences. Dr. Abugasea Heidt strongly believes in the connecting power of languages.

Dr. Natalie Sue Svrcek, SUNY Brockport

Dr. Natalie Sue Svrcek is an associate professor of Literacy in the Department of Education and Human Development at SUNY Brockport. She taught in Texas public elementary schools for 11 years. Currently, Dr. Svrcek teaches literacy courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, advises childhood education undergraduate students, and works collaboratively on scholarly pursuits with a variety of faculty members in her department.

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Published

2025-05-30

How to Cite

Abugasea Heidt, M., & Svrcek, N. (2025). Reframing Education for Multilinguals: Honoring Students’ Linguistic, Literacy, and Cultural Assets. Language and Literacy, 27(2), 253–273. https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29632

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 2 (2025): Regular Issue

Section

Articles

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