Who Do We Mean When We Say “Multilingual” (and Why Does It Matter)?

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Epistemological Understandings Across Linguistic Contexts (Table 26)

Abstract

This paper surveys relevant educational research literature from 2009-2023 in order to discern how scholars employ the term multilingual and, in particular, which populations of learners they seek to denote with this term. Our review of the literature uncovers key tensions and inconsistencies with respect to how multilingual is operationalized, highlighting the ways in which different populations or “sub-groups” of students can easily become conflated in the scholarship and in attendant educational discourse. Our objective is to interrogate the lack of terminological consistency in extant literature with an eye towards elucidating the consequential nature of this inconsistency for racialized and linguistically minoritized students; and initiate a scholarly conversation about the attendant consequences and implications for educational research, policy, and practice.

Authors

• Ed'd Luna Bhagwandeen, Stanford University

• Megumi Takada, Stanford University

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, Stanford University