The objective of this study is to explore possibilities and practices of translanguaging for epistemic equity in teacher-researcher workshops. More specifically, we report on a series of 4 in-service teacher workshops on translanguaging that we, three researchers and teacher educators, held in an adult basic education (ABE) center in small-town Finland. We analyze our data (audio recordings) through a lens of knowledge and translanguaging theory with the goal of understanding the potential for working towards pedagogies of epistemic justice with the teachers.

De Sousa Santos (2007) understands “Modern Western thinking” as “abyssal thinking” as it “consists of a system of visible and invisible distinctions'' (p. 45) that draw a line, an abyss, beyond which knowledges do not exist. According to de Sousa Santos, it is particularly “popular, lay, plebeian, peasant, or Indigenous knowledges” (p. 47) that exist beyond this epistemic abyss, to which we would add the knowledges of another epistemically marginalized group: adult learners from African, South American, West Asian, and Eastern European countries, who come to Finland as refugees or migrants, often with a history of interrupted formal education. As de Sousa Santos contends, the abyss of epistemic erasure serves to justify and perpetuate the colonial project of epistemic imperialism, where so-called “Western” educational institutions aim to impart their accredited knowledges onto those perceived as lacking them. Scholars in the area of language education have applied his framework to linguistic practices (García et al., 2021) and explained how continued colonial logic bans certain linguistic practices beyond the abyss by considering them, if at all, to be inadequate (e.g., non-academic). 

To challenge this abyssal thinking, they have suggested to adopt translanguaging as a pedagogy and political stance: “Translanguaging rejects abyssal thinking; it is a way to understand the vast complexity and heterogeneity of language practices, avoiding [...] their evaluation in the negative terms of the colonial imaginary line” (García et al., 2021, p. 208). We build on this existing work in our attempt to design linguistically and culturally sensitive teacher education (Lucas & Villegas, 2013; Paris, 2012), which aims to support teachers in crossing the pervasive epistemic line (i.e. engage in what we refer to as “line crossing”) by understanding students’ linguistic and other epistemic resources as assets and tapping them for their learning. In line with a translanguaging-as-a-polticial-stance (Wei, 2022) approach, our workshops did not merely focus on recognizing diverse linguistic resources, but also on questioning the norms and standards that reify linguistic compartmentalization (e.g. separation into named languages or language families) and on bringing marginalized languages and knowledges to the center of educational activities.

Some work focuses on translanguaging as a practice, describing linguistic practices that surface in any context where multilinguals interact, such as trilingual families (Paulsrud & Straszer, 2018), CLIL classrooms (Jakonen, Szabó & Laihonen, 2018), or businesses (Räisäinen, 2018). Research in the translanguaging-as-practice paradigm from Finnish contexts that focuses on normalizing multilingual interaction in educational spaces, may include findings that show potential for embrittling linguistic norms (e.g., Jakonen, Szabo & Laihonen, 2018; Lehtonen, 2019; Nikula and Moore, 2016), but typically refrains from tapping into antioppressive scholarship. Some recent work has taken up translanguaging as a political stance and brought it in dialogue with budding research on Finnish coloniality (author, 2022; author, 2023). This study contributes to this line of work as it explores the potential of translanguaging for epistemic justice in an ABE context. We ask:

• What constitutes “the epistemic line” in an ABE in-service teacher education context?

• How did teachers and researchers navigate (the possibility of) line crossings in the workshops?

This paper reports on a series of 4 workshops for in-service teachers at a community college for ABE in small-town Finland, which serves a linguistically and culturally diverse population of adults with migrant or refugee experience, including some students with emerging print literacy and many with interrupted formal education (sometimes referred to as “LESLLA”). ABE in Finland is organised by schools, municipalities, or third sector operators, and is financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. ABE teachers serve one of the most heterogeneous groups of students in Finland, particularly in terms of their linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. They typically do so without any targeted education, even though research has found continuous education for these teachers to be crucial (Hos, 2016). Following Vinogradov’s (2013) advice on developing LESLLA teachers’ knowledge on early literacy instruction, teaching, refugee/migrant experiences, language acquisition, and adult learning, we designed workshops on translanguaging, which were aimed to encourage the teachers’ to support their students’ multilinguality and challenge monolingual and raciolinguistic ideologies that limit their opportunities for participating in school and society. During 4 afternoons (12 hours), three researchers (the authors) from the closest university (120 km) worked with 9 teachers (of Math, Literacy, Finnish, Culture Courses, History, Science, and Biology) on issues around translanguaging. The workshops were part of a larger critical ethnographic study that is currently ongoing at the school and examines the discursive construction of epistemic il/legitimacy (Who knows? Academy of Finland, 2020-2025). We were thus able to draw on long-standing relationships and ongoing fieldwork to identify participants and familiarize ourselves with the school context. The workshops included activities such as discussions of research, reflection on personal and professional experiences, material design, and peer observations. Data for this paper stems from transcripts of audio-recordings and fieldnotes from the workshops, as well as open-ended, semi-structured interviews with the teacher participants. After organizing and transcribing the data, we collaboratively identified instances of “line recognition” (i.e. participants’ acknowledgments of an epistemic line) through close reading of half of the data set and discussion. We then looked for such instances more systematically across all transcripts and fieldnotes and merged them into the themes of “describing the line”, “considerations for (not) crossing”, and “crossings”, which enabled us to uncover some of the complex pedagogical, social, and interpersonal negotiations that became evident in the participants’ discourse from the workshop sessions.

A preliminary data analysis suggests that teachers were familiar with translanguaging as a classroom practice, whereas translanguaging as a pedagogy and political stance was more elusive and controversial. Teachers seemed torn between their empathy for the students and pressure to comply with curricular and workplace expectations (describing the epistemic line). As they spoke about the challenge of eliciting (standard) written or spoken Finnish from students, they reflected on their willingness to accept or reward non-standard student output as a potential disservice to their students. While they identified “understanding of second language users” as a skill they had developed, they also argued that overusing this skill would not prepare their students for their workplace practicum or working life (considerations for not crossing the line). The discourse of “preparing students for working life” ties in with neoliberal ideologies of multilingualism as commonly represented in EU policies and debates, which serve the purpose of creating “a common European citizen who could communicate across languages to trade, sell, and enlarge markets” (García et al, 2021, p. 217) and is thus in opposition to the decolonial effort of translanguaging. A crossing of the line would imply an orientation against neoliberal ideologies that permeate ABE contexts (author, 2020). However, our analysis also revealed instances of line crossing as translanguaging, for instance, when teachers strategically encouraged multilingual interaction to negotiate meaning, co-developed practices for creating translanguaging spaces, and recognized existing yet unfamiliar epistemic repertoires (e.g., students being able to solve math problems correctly in a way the teacher did not understand). We discuss our findings and implications for policy and practice, as well as a reflection on our own positionalities as white, European, middle-class academics. The finished paper will be submitted to Teaching and Teacher Education, Nordic Studies in Education, or the International Journal of Multicultural Education.

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