The Prism of Children's Plurilingualism: A Multi-site Inquiry with Children as Co-researchers across English and French Schools in Toronto and Montpellier

Through this multi-site study of children’s plurilingualism, I asked what we would discover about plurilingualism by positioning children as co-ethnographers of their plurilingual lives and what teaching might look like if it were based on a plurilingual rather than a monolingual paradigm. During a 4-month collaboration with four different English and French school models in Toronto, Canada and one bilingual school in Montpellier, France, children documented their plurilingual and pluricultural experiences: they took photos of their literacy practices at school and at home and classified them by theme to analyze the linguistic landscape around them and to reflect collaboratively on language policies that manage different spaces. Based on reflexive techniques such as drawing, creative writing and collage, students represented their plurilingualism by creating a series of individual and collective "identity texts" (Cummins Early, 2011). Creative arts-informed methods were used to allow children to express their views without being limited to the language of instruction (Molinié, 2009; Auger, 2010). In addition, these reflexive techniques scaffolded students’ engagement as co-researchers by enabling them to creatively co-construct new knowledge and represent their perspectives. Five key elements emerged as being foundational for teaching in the 21st century through the prism of students’ plurilingualism: 1) a vision of all students as ever-evolving plurilingual learners; 2) a purposeful inclusion of the full range of students’ communicative repertoires; 3) collaboration among teachers, students, families and the wider community, often supported by technology; 4) valuing creativity by building time, space for the creative expression of academic work; 5) adopting an inquiry-based approach to language and literacy learning. This research contributes to an understanding of the complexity of children’s plurilingualism, as well as to the development of a didactique of plurilingualism in mainstream classrooms that is both culturally responsive and linguistically inclusive.Ph.D