Embracing the Whole Meaning-Making Person Through Arts-Rich Translanguaging

Recently, Dr. Mobina Sahraee Juybari spoke with A/Prof. Julie Choi (ARTP Lab leader), Dr. Raf Cleeve Gerkens, Dr. Shu Ohki, and PhD candidate Melissa Slamet. The discussion offered insights into how plurilingual, arts-informed, and holistic approaches can come together to support learners across educational contexts.

Authentically embracing the full multimodal and linguistic repertoires that both teachers and students bring into the classroom is an ongoing challenge. Plurilingualism is often discussed as something students enact, yet less attention is given to how teachers can draw on their own embodied, linguistic, cultural, and artistic resources to scaffold learning. Plurilingual pedagogy, then, is not simply about bringing multiple languages into the room—it is about welcoming the whole meaning-making person and the full range of semiotic tools through which we express, imagine, and learn.

Arts-rich translanguaging pedagogy offers one powerful pathway for doing this. It broadens our view of language beyond words and grammar, making space for movement, image, sound, gesture, storytelling, and other creative modalities that students and educators already use in everyday life. Within this broad landscape of meaning-making, the Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy (ARTP) Lab at the University of Melbourne provides an illustrative example of how these principles are being explored in practice.

Why Arts-Rich Translanguaging Matters for Plurilingual Pedagogy

Plurilingualism recognises that learners draw on a fluid and interconnected repertoire of resources. When paired with the arts, this repertoire becomes even more embodied and extensive. The ARTP Lab team highlighted that the lab is built around the idea of embracing the whole meaning-making person, encouraging students to draw on their full repertoire of resources to develop and expand their voice. 

This poster is an example of how teacher educators can turn the lens on themselves as a way to enact plurilingualism in the classroom.

Intersections of Arts and Translanguaging 

Mobina talked to the group about the notion of the arts and how it is manifested in their research, with a special focus on how different approaches intersect to shape ARTP pedagogy. During the discussion:

Raf highlighted that both translanguaging and the arts recognise a student’s broad repertoire of expressive resources. She explained that the arts dimension introduces multimodal and aesthetic experiences that engage students’ senses, imagination, and cognition, creating space for diverse ways of expressing and learning. The goal is not only to provide room for expression but to teach in and through the arts in ways that support key school literacies—such as writing—more inclusively and holistically. 

Shu focused on principles from Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), particularly the 4Cs (Content, Communication, Cognition, Culture), and how they help teachers attend to the multiple dimensions that students bring into learning spaces. He emphasised that the culture component is especially important, as it draws attention to the linguistic and learning resources students carry from different contexts. He also noted that incorporating the arts makes learning more playful, helping students feel comfortable expressing who they are. 

Julie explained how translanguaging opens up students’ full linguistic repertoires, encouraging them to mobilise all their resources in developing their voices. 

Melissa shared how identity texts and bookmaking activities in teacher education allow future educators to experience these principles firsthand, helping them understand how language is deeply intertwined with power, emotion, identity, and culture. 

Future Directions: Plurilingual Pedagogy in Practice

The team agreed that their biggest current challenge is the continued dominance of monolingual and monomodal norms in learning, teaching, and assessment. This is why they continue to think about ways they can model – or enact – plurilingualism for their students. Their future focus is to design creative research projects to work with teachers and students to develop and provide evidence-based pedagogical approaches.

Dr. Julie Choi also mentioned this is what they aim to achieve through ARTP in Action YouTube channel. Here, they share their work, unpack complex concepts, and suggest practical implementation strategies to bridge theory and classroom practice, with the goal of valuing what students bring rather than focusing on what they lack.

The conversation spans contexts from primary schools through to higher education, demonstrating the relevance of arts-rich translanguaging pedagogy across different learning environments. 

You can watch the full discussion here: https://youtu.be/vKe2FrgIzb0?si=Eq4Qwd0WRCvcrC52

Reference:

Choi, J., Cleeve Gerkens, R., & Slamet, M. J. (2025). Sustaining a translanguaging community of practice: a narrative inquiry by teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 53(4), 428–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2025.2495772