Translanguaging pedagogy: An integrative review study questioning its potential benefits and main concerns

Abstract

In the era of globalization, when cultural diversity and multilingualism cross borders, specific changes have been observed in human relations and educational implementations. Such changes in multicultural and multilingual contexts have made it necessary to create novel pedagogies for language teaching by tailoring traditional teaching and learning approaches. Therefore, adapting language teaching methods and techniques to multilingual and multicultural classrooms through translanguaging is one of the hottest issues in the current literature. Remarkably, the primary purpose of this present study is to portray a theoretical understanding of translanguaging and further discuss the pedagogical aspect of it in the Turkish context through an integrative review methodology. To this end, five research studies conducted in the Turkish context were selected based on certain criteria and analyzed through document analysis to reach a comprehensive picture of translanguaging practices in EFL classroom settings. By doing so, it attempted to argue its potential benefits and possible challenges to guide stakeholders about how and/or when to benefit from translanguaging pedagogy so that it becomes more precise and beneficial for classroom use.