Blair Et Al. (2018) Reimagining English Medium Instructional Settings As Sites of Multilingual and Multimodal TESOL Quarterly - 2018 - Blair

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Reimagining English-Medium
Instructional Settings as Sites of
Multilingual and Multimodal Meaning
Making
ALISSA BLAIR
University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison
Wisconsin, United States
MARI HANEDA AND FRANCES NEBUS BOSE
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania, United States
Challenging the notion that English-medium instruction (EMI) is

necessarily an English-only space, the authors argue for an alternative
vision of EMI settings as spaces that benefit both emergent bi/multi-
linguals and their English-monolingual peers. Given that the enact-
ment of EMI varies according to the underlying language ideologies
of the educators who implement it, the authors argue for the impor-
tance of shifting from deficit-based monogolossic ideologies to more
asset-based heteroglossic ideologies and of creating heteroglossic “im-
plementational spaces” (Hornberger, 2005, p. 605). In such spaces,
all students, particularly emergent bi/multilinguals, are encouraged
to act as agents, strategically drawing upon the full range of their
semiotic repertoires (Kusters, Spotti, Swanwick, & Tapio, 2017) in
order to participate, learn, and contribute as full members of the
classroom community. In this context, the critical question is how
such heteroglossic practices can actually be enacted by teachers who
are themselves not bi/multilingual. As a contribution to answering
this question, the authors present two promising examples from two
independently conducted qualitative studies, which were carried out
in EMI mainstream classrooms in U.S. elementary schools, to show
how such spaces might be actualized in practice. Then, using them
as a point of reference, the authors discuss key issues in fostering
and sustaining such spaces, and offer recommendations for teachers
and teacher educators.
doi: 10.1002/tesq.449
516 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2018

© 2018 TESOL International Association
15457249, 2018, 3, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tesq.449 by Desi Arinda - <shibboleth>-member@monash.edu.au , Wiley Online Library on [12/03/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
E nglish-medium instruction (EMI) has become an increasingly
international phenomenon, as many countries now use English as
the medium of instruction in universities, secondary schools, and even
primary schools (e.g., Dearden, 2014; Milligan & Tikly, 2016; Rea-Dick-
ins, Khamis, & Olivero, 2013). Consequently, this phenomenon has
important implications for the education of young people across the
globe. In this article, because we are involved in research in U.S.
schools, we consider this issue in relation to emergent bi/multilinguals in
mainstream classrooms in U.S. public elementary schools, where Eng-
lish is the medium of instruction. Drawing on Garcıa (2009a), we pre-
fer the term emergent bi/multilinguals to refer to students who qualify
for English-language services at school rather than English learners
(ELs), to emphasize their multilingual abilities.
In this context, the enactment of EMI varies according to the underly-
ing language ideologies of the educators who implement it. Regardless
of educators’ own language backgrounds or number of emergent bi/
multilinguals in their classrooms, it is possible for them to move from
monogolossic ideologies that reinforce monolingual and monocultural
norms and to adopt heteroglossic ideologies that value students’ agency
and creativity in their meaning making and allow them to draw strategi-
cally on their diverse multilingual and multimodal resources, including
their dexterous use of technologies.
In this article, challenging the notion that EMI is necessarily an
English-only space, we argue for an alternative vision of EMI settings
as spaces that benefit both emergent bi/multilinguals and their Eng-
lish-monolingual peers. In so doing, we aim to contribute to the grow-
ing literature in TESOL and related fields that challenges the
monoglossic language ideologies that appear to persist in many main-
stream classrooms (e.g., Blackledge & Creese, 2014; Flores & Schissel,
2014; Garcıa, 2009b; Garcıa & Wei, 2013). Aligning ourselves with the
multilingual turn in applied linguistics that seeks to overcome the
monolingual bias (May, 2014), we argue for the importance of shifting
from monoglossic to heteroglossic language ideologies and of creating
heteroglossic “implementational spaces” (Hornberger, 2005, p. 605),
in which emergent bi/multilinguals are encouraged to draw on the
full range of their “semiotic repertoires” (Kusters, Spotti, Swanwick, &
Tapio, 2017, p. 219) in order to participate, learn, and contribute as
full members of the classroom community.
We first present the critical sociocultural perspective on education
that underpins our work and then provide a summary of current
thinking in the field that highlights the importance of heteroglossic
implementational spaces in K-12 classrooms. To illustrate how such
spaces might be actualized in practice, we present two promising
examples from our empirical studies. Then, using them as points of
REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 517

reference, we discuss some important issues and challenges that may
be encountered in the enactment of such spaces, and offer recommen-
dations for teachers and teacher educators.
CRITICAL SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON

EDUCATION
Increasingly, standardized tests are used internationally to measure
students’ academic achievement, and outcome-based education has
become the norm (Flores & Schissel, 2014). In this standardized
approach to education, the emphasis is placed on externally estab-
lished learning outcomes that determine the end points for students’
learning. This production model of education is not new, of course.
As Cole (2005) points out, it has underlain Western schooling prac-
tices for many centuries. However, while it may have been adequate
when universal schooling was concerned mainly with the establishment
of basic literacy and numeracy and a smattering of national history,
geography, and religion, it is no longer appropriate to meet the
demands of the rapidly changing, technologically driven workplace of
today. Furthermore, as Cole (2005) makes clear, it is totally inadequate
as a solution to the difficulties that arise from “the interaction of pre-
sumably universal school content and manifestly variable socio-cultural
values” that students bring into the classroom (p. 213).
In contrast, the critical sociocultural perspective that we adopt wel-
comes the diverse sociocultural values, dispositions, and knowledge
brought by students as important resources to draw on in their educa-
tion. It builds on sociocultural theory to understand the relationship
between teaching and learning while simultaneously taking a critical
equity orientation inspired by Freire’s work (1970/2002; 1973) in
order to address contemporary issues related to cultural diversity,
power, and equity (e.g., Gutierrez & Vosooughi, 2016; Lewis, Enciso, &
Moje, 2007; Stetsenko, 2008; Vosooughi & Gutierrez, 2016).
Briefly stated, we draw on aspects of Vygotsky’s theorizing on the
social origins of higher mental functioning and semiotic mediation.
Vygotsky (1978) contended that all human psychological processes
develop out of collaborative forms of social interaction. Further, he
argued that individual development occurs through the process of
entering into an ongoing culture through participation in shared activ-
ities with more experienced members of the culture and, in this way,
of gradually appropriating its tools, both material and psychological,
as well as the modes of action and thinking that they make possible.
While he placed particular emphasis on the role of language in these
518 TESOL QUARTERLY

activities, he also made clear that other semiotic means are equally
important (Jon-Steiner & Mahn, 1996).
While we base our approach on Vygotsky’s emphasis on the impor-
tance of dialogic interaction for human development and learning, we
also draw on Freire’s idea of dialogue which leads to praxis involving
both reflection and action. Critiquing the “banking concept of educa-
tion,” which serves to perpetuate the established order, Freire pro-
posed “problem-posing” education, in which teachers engage students
in dialogue to help them develop critical thinking in order to reassess
the way they exist in the world so that they “come to see the world not
as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire,
1970/2002, p. 4). Freire further argued that teachers should aim to
nurture among students “the critical capacity to make choices and
transform” reality (Freire, 1970/2002, p. 4). In this article, we use the
term transformation to refer to occasions of empowerment in which the
status quo is challenged by teachers and/or students and more equita-
ble practices emerge. What is being transformed may include students’
or teachers’ assumptions or perceptions which, regardless of the scope
of the change, may, in turn, lead to a transformative movement
towards concrete equitable practice.
Particularly relevant implications we take from the critical sociocul-
tural perspective on education include (a) nurturing classroom prac-
tices that support dialogue involving diverse ideas, languages, and
modes of expression, because through engaging in such practices stu-
dents not only appropriate but also reinvent the relevant linguistic
and cultural norms and associated values, thereby developing their
sense of self; (b) positioning students as agents who engage in trans-
formative practices, by encouraging them to capitalize on their semi-
otic resources in meaning making; and (c) relating students’ learning
to their lived experiences, and cultivating their learning further
through imagining “what is not yet,” instead of directing learning
toward currently prescribed endpoints that disregard individuals’
developmental trajectories and imagined possibilities.
TOWARD HETEROGLOSSIC IMPLEMENTATION SPACES

IN MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS
From the critical sociocultural perspective reviewed above, for emer-

gent bi/multilinguals who are learning English as an additional lan-
guage at school and/or learning academic content through English it
is of paramount importance for their educational success across all
EMI contexts that their multifaceted strengths and experiences be

regarded as assets and drawn upon to enhance their learning. In the
United States, emergent bi/multilinguals—a heterogeneous group by
nationality, language background, race and ethnicity—make up 9% of
the total student population and constitute its fastest growing segment
(Office of English Language Acquisition [OELA], 2015); they include
children who are newcomers as well as those born in the United
States, and children of parents with high levels of education or of little
formal education. As a result, today’s mainstream classrooms have
increasingly become linguistically and culturally diverse as emergent
bi/multilinguals study together with their English-monolingual peers.
Nevertheless, educational policies in predominantly Anglophone coun-
tries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, are still
rooted in monoglossic language ideologies based on the assumption
that all students should conform to monolingual and monocultural
norms (Costley, 2014; Flores & Schissel, 2014; Garcıa, 2009b; Leung,
2016). Even in these countries, however, there are scholars who
strongly advocate for the adoption of heteroglossic approaches to edu-
cation on the grounds that uncritically perpetuating current monolin-
gual and monocultural norms is neither adequate for the preparation
of students to become global citizens nor equitable, in that it prevents
students, particularly emergent bi/multilinguals, from capitalizing on
their existing meaning-making resources (e.g., Flores & Schissel, 2014;
French, 2016; Garcıa, 2009b; Garcıa & Wei, 2013).1 Significantly, this
initiative is paralleled by the aforementioned multilingual turn in
applied linguistics (May, 2014), which emphasizes the fluid nature of
language practices in which people engage in ways that fit their needs
by using all available resources, including multiple languages.
When mainstream classrooms are reenvisioned as heteroglossic
spaces in which linguistic and cultural diversity is embraced, emergent
bi/multilinguals are no longer thought of as lacking in the new lan-
guage they are learning, but, instead, as already endowed with rich bi/
multilingual and bi/multicultural resources. Viewed from this perspec-
tive, these classrooms can be seen as fertile ground for all students to
become global citizens, provided that they are encouraged to learn
how to negotiate linguistic and cultural differences and to be agile in
mobilizing their varied semiotic repertoires to achieve their own goals
as well as those prescribed by the curriculum. Such classrooms can be
considered as heteroglossic implementational spaces (Hornberger,
2005; Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) in which monolingual and mono-
cultural norms can be contested by both teachers and students as
1
The concept of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) references the coexistence of distinct vari-
eties within a “single” language, pointing to the linguistic diversity and multivoiceness
that is inherent in any living language.
520 TESOL QUARTERLY

students learn, drawing on their full semiotic repertoires. These reper-
toires involve both existing and evolving resources, including cultural
funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), the “dexterous”
linguistic and cultural practices that students develop through their
experiences with social media and/or interaction with peers and fam-
ily members (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 91), and translanguaging, that is,
seamlessly and strategically using multiple languages and language
varieties (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Garcıa & Wei, 2013).
Nevertheless, despite the growing body of literature that emphasizes
the importance of classroom practices in which multiple languages
and modes of representation are valued, monoglossic language ideolo-
gies and practices continue to dominate in many educational policies
as well as in classroom practices. In this context, therefore, the critical
question is how such envisioned heteroglossic practices can actually be
put into use by teachers who are either themselves not bi/multilingual
or do not share similar cultural funds of knowledge with these stu-
dents. As a contribution to answering this question, in what follows we
describe the ways in which monolingual teachers2 in two mainstream
U.S. elementary classrooms, which have different demographic profiles
and institutional settings, made attempts to enact heteroglossic
practices.
These cases are based on two independently conducted qualitative
studies in geographically different locations. The first case, taken
from a one-year-and-a-half-long ethnographic study by the third
author (2016–17), involved a second-grade EMI teacher co-construct-
ing heteroglossic spaces with her students. Data sources for the study
consisted of field notes from 2–3 weekly participant observations con-
ducted through the lens of Davies’s (2014) approach to listening to
children, videorecorded classroom interactions, video-elicitation inter-
views with children (Cutter-Mackenzie, Edwards, & Quinton, 2015;
Tobin, 2000), and student-generated artifacts. During the aforemen-
tioned interviews, the children themselves selected moments that they
felt were most significant. Subsequently, videorecording of these
moments were analyzed, foregrounding children and teacher under-
standings, as shown through the analysis of interviews, field notes,
and analytic memos (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). The second
case, taken from the first author’s 1-year-long qualitative inquiry
(2012–2013), examines practices in a fourth-grade EMI classroom
against the background of school-level practices. Data were generated
through 1-day-long monthly observations of two fourth-grade
2
While we concur with Bakhtin (1981) that all languages are inherently heteroglossic and
inclusive of different varieties, we opt for using the conventional term monolingual for
the purpose of clarity.

classrooms, one EMI and one bilingual, although—given the present
focus—the data discussed pertain to the EMI classroom. In addition
to the classroom observational protocol, which logged moment-by-
moment activities and resources and materials used, primary data
sources included audiorecorded interactions and interviews with the
principal, teachers, and students. All the data were analyzed at the
levels of the classroom and school through thematic coding and by
writing analytic memos (Salda~ na, 2009) as well as by triangulating
sources (Denzin, 1978). In the report of the two cases, all the names
used are pseudonyms.
SECOND-GRADE ENGLISH-MEDIUM CLASSROOM AT

OAKVILLE ELEMENTARY
This case focuses on ways in which a second-grade teacher and her

students co-created heteroglossic implementational spaces (Horn-
berger, 2005; Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) in Oakville Elementary.
The school was located in a relatively affluent school district in a mid-
dle-class suburban university town in the rural northeast of the United
States. However, a third of the students in the school were classified as
economically disadvantaged,3 and 15%, most of whom were born out-
side the United States, as emergent bi/multilinguals, with Mandarin
Chinese and Korean being the most prevalent language backgrounds.
Of the 22 students in the class, 15 identified themselves as monolin-
gual English speakers, and seven as (emergent) bi/multilinguals with
Chinese, Hebrew, German, Spanish, or Korean as their home lan-
guages. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, the two students who are focused on
in this article, were newcomer beginning-level emergent multilinguals
who had been educated in mainland China prior to coming to the
United States.
Caitlin, the classroom teacher, a monolingual White female, had
been teaching second grade at the school for 8 years. In order to cre-
ate a classroom learning community, she regularly designed activities
that encouraged her students to share and learn from each other
through a classroom blog, pair work, and whole-class sharing. Viewing
her young students as capable actors with different strengths, she cre-
ated multiple pathways for them to accomplish the tasks she set and
encouraged them to use semiotic resources, including, language,
3
Economically disadvantaged is a term used by U.S. government institutions in allocating
free school meals to a student who is a member of a household that meets the income
eligibility guidelines for free or reduced-price meals.
522 TESOL QUARTERLY

music, materials of different kinds, as well as visual modes of
presentation.
Opening up Heteroglossic Spaces: Blogging Science
It was in Caitlin’s science lessons that the use of multimodal

resources was particularly prominent. In order to allow her students,
whose verbal abilities in English varied, to participate fully in science
activities, she often asked them to manipulate materials, such as pho-
tographs and diagrams, and use tablets to visually communicate their
knowledge of science. As a teacher-leader in science in her school dis-
trict, Caitlin was committed to inquiry-oriented science. The following
example shows how Caitlin attempted to create an equitable classroom
space and how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline were enabled to participate in
a science experiment through the full use of semiotic repertories.
The 45-minute engineering experiment focused on structure and
properties of matter, in which students were encouraged to act as
designers and data collectors. Prior to the reported event, the stu-
dents, working in pairs, designed an insulator using provided materials
—including disposable cups, tape, and cardboard—with the goal of
preventing an ice cube from melting. This design component encour-
aged student choice and enabled them to communicate their science
knowledge through the artifacts they designed (i.e., an insulator),
rather than by simply relying on their English verbal abilities. During
the reported event, the students were to observe the speed at which
their ice cube melted, take pictures on their tablets at 10-minute inter-
vals, and report their results on the classroom blog. This activity high-
lighted student choice, experimentation, and play.
On their own initiative, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline created multiple
blog posts. Using the tablet, they created images of their insulator, on
which they superimposed Chinese characters, with songs they com-
posed about the ice not melting, sung in Mandarin; the first blog con-
sisted of different configurations of the repeated lyric “没有化, la la la”
[it didn’t melt] (see Figure 1). The spirit of play and innovation cre-
ated a “linguistic playground” (Gutierrez, Bien, Selland, & Pierce,
2011, p. 240), where the two children translanguaged using verbal lan-
guages and music. They expressed joy through embodied actions, such
as high-pitched screaming and running in place—ways of acting that
differed widely from their usual school behavior. Xi Xi Lu explained
how her feelings were also embedded in her blog post by stating that
the “la la la” phrase embedded in her original lyric means “happy.”
What made this experiment memorable for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline
was the evident success of their design, the freedom and novelty of

FIGURE 1. Xi Xi Lu’s first blog post from states of matter science experiment. [Colour
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
being able to express themselves using the semiotic resources of the

tablet and through singing in their home language rather than Eng-
lish. All of these components increased their sense of accomplishment
and resulted in new possibilities of who they can be in their classroom.
As this example shows, the implementation space that opened up in
the experiment allowed Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to use a wider variety
of semiotic resources, including bricolage of materials, technology,
Mandarin talk, Chinese writing, and singing to complete the experi-
ment successfully. This, in turn, transformed their own view of them-
selves in this EMI classroom, from students who needed to rely on a
peer translator in order to participate, to those who could act compe-
tently on their own. Throughout the year, they repeatedly referred to
this experiment as the occasion when they first felt empowered in
their classroom.
Acting as Language Experts: Bilingual Read-Alouds
Despite the two girls’ successful participation in the experiment,

their strategic use of semiotic repertoires was not initially recognized.
However, in the following read-aloud example, their bilingual ability
was not only publicly recognized but also appreciated, with the whole
class coming to view Xi Xi Lu and Madeline as language experts who
had unique knowledge from which all could benefit. Also transforma-
tional for them was their growing recognition of who they could be
524 TESOL QUARTERLY

and what they could do in the class. Five months after the reported
experiment, Caitlin introduced bilingual read-alouds as an extension
of whole-class read-alouds, which were already a staple of her language
arts lessons. This development was prompted by her evolving aware-
ness of the potential value of including her emergent bi/multilin-
guals’ home languages in her instruction. Caitlin and the emergent
bi/multilingual children led these bilingual read-alouds. It was
through these literacy events that the English-monolingual members
of the class came to recognize and start to appreciate the diverse linguistic
resources of their emergent bi/multilingual peers. To aid this process,
Caitlin used what Rymes (2014) calls metacommentary to draw attention
to the communicative value of languages other than English and the
richness of the emergent bi/multilinguals’ linguistic resources.
The use of bilingual texts in read-alouds elevated the status of lan-
guages other than English in the classroom. For example, Tanya, an
English monolingual student, expressed in wonderment that it was the
“first time I heard Chinese in a book,” indicating her new awareness
that books could be written in Chinese, as her previous experience of
the language had been exclusively that of hearing her bi/multilingual
peers converse in the language. Acting as “language experts,” the
emergent bi/multilingual children began to participate more fully in
these read-aloud events. One such read-aloud featured a Chinese-Eng-
lish picture book, The Three Little Pigs (San zhi xiao zhu [The Three Little
Pigs], 2002) that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline read with Caitlin. This event
prompted many spontaneous student-initiated exchanges, as the whole
class became engrossed in matching the juxtaposed texts in English
and Chinese. For example, Tanya asked Xi Xi Lu, “Do you know what
they’re saying in that,” referring to a part of the Chinese text. When
Xi Xi Lu nodded affirmatively, Tanya then asked, “Do you still know
what it is in English?” Tanya later reported that she had been attempt-
ing to understand how one can be simultaneously proficient in more
than one language, thus showing her fledgling awareness of the possi-
bility of bi/multilingualism. At this point, Caitlin addressed the whole
class (metacommentary), exclaiming “Can you imagine being able to
understand both?!,” in this way firmly positioning Xi Xi Lu and Made-
line as individuals with rich linguistic resources.
Building on the preceding student-initiated exchanges, Caitlin went
on to emphasize that knowledge of languages other than English
could actually extend students’ understanding of a text, by pointing out
that meaning can be conveyed differently in different languages. In
the following excerpt, in an attempt to make sense of the juxtaposed
Chinese and English texts, Gina4 asked the meaning of the signs on
4
Gina, Tanya, Caitlin, and Sophia had no knowledge of Chinese.

the Chinese signpost (San zhi xiao zhu [The Three Little Pigs], 2002), to
which, prompted to respond by Caitlin, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline trans-
lated it into English, enabling Caitlin and Sophia to join in:
Gina: I was just wondering, what does that sign say? (points to a sign written
in stylized Chinese in the book’s illustrations, “猪大哥,”pig’s big
brother)
Caitlin: Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, Gina wants to know what that sign says, do
you know what it says?
Madeline: YES! Pig’s brother.
Xi Xi Lu: Pig’s big brother home.
Caitlin: Interesting.
Tanya: That’s such a small sign to fit all of that into.
Caitlin: I agree, it’s quite a small sign to fit all of that in, huh.
Sophia: That’s four words and they did it in like four letters. (The character
猪 is written in a stylized manner such that it appeared as two
separate characters, which Sophia interpreted as two words.)
In this excerpt, Madeline responded to the whole class—itself a
rare occurrence. Xi Xi Lu then added more information. Based on
their collective answer, other students with no knowledge of Chinese
explored how meaning could be expressed differently in different
written languages, for example with concepts being expressed in
logographic symbols in Chinese. They also noticed that a word that
was represented by a sequence of letters in English could be repre-
sented by a single logograph in Chinese. This noticing (Schmidt,
1991) showed their nascent metalinguistic awareness, which is consid-
ered critical to language development. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline were
thus able to assist in heightening their peers’ language awareness. In
this way, this read-aloud literacy event not only benefited the two
newcomers but also other students in the class. This transformation
of the English-dominant read-alouds space to a heteroglossic one
was made possible by Caitlin’s decision of incorporating bilingual
read-alouds. On her part, Caitlin, who had little knowledge of Chi-
nese, took the risk of putting herself in a vulnerable position as a
teacher.
In sum, while Caitlin provided the organizational structure, her stu-
dents actively co-constructed the heteroglossic spaces. The two school
subjects of science and literature, at least in these examples, called for
526 TESOL QUARTERLY

different contextual configurations of resources (Goodwin, 2013). In
science, non-linguistic resources became “semiotically charged” (Good-
win, 2013, p. 8), whereas in the read-aloud example it was the lan-
guages, English and Chinese, along with their written scripts and
pictorial images in the picture book, that were prominent in impor-
tance. The read-aloud event also points to Caitlin’s growth as a tea-
cher, as she was able to use emergent bi/multilinguals students’ home
languages as valuable resources in her instruction, which contributed
to the development of language awareness among both the emergent
bi/multilinguals and English-monolingual students in the classroom.
FOURTH-GRADE ENGLISH-MEDIUM CLASS AT

HAMILTON ELEMENTARY
This case differs from the first in that heteroglossic practices were
supported at the school level. It examines student engagement and
teachers’ instructional practices in a fourth-grade EMI classroom at
Hamilton Elementary, a linguistically and culturally diverse third-
through fourth- grade elementary school in an urban school district in
a mid-sized Midwestern city. At Hamilton, 70% of students were con-
sidered “economically disadvantaged” and more than 50% of students
were identified as emergent bi/multilinguals. The school offered a
developmental bilingual program in Spanish and English and EMI
classes with language-support services. The EMI classroom under inves-
tigation hosted 23 students with six language backgrounds in addition
to English: Spanish, Hmong, Nepalese, Tibetan, French, and Czech.
All focal children were born in the United States and had attended
school in the same district since kindergarten.
As was common practice at Hamilton Elementary, in each classroom
the roster and all instructional responsibilities were shared by two
classroom teachers. In the EMI classroom, Jen had been at the school
for three years and Megan for seven, and they had worked as coteach-
ers in the same classroom for one year. They identified as White
women of European heritage and knew a little Spanish, which they
occasionally used to communicate with their Spanish-speaking Latino/
a students and families. It was clear from ongoing conversations that
they viewed their students’ bi/multilingualism as assets, and they
strove to learn about their lives and home-language practices by fre-
quently interacting with their families. In Jen’s words, regular contact
with families helped emergent bi/multilinguals and added to “teacher
knowledge.” It was similarly evident from classroom observations that,
while maintaining high expectations of their students, these teachers

also took into account and built on their students’ current knowledge
and language abilities. As they co-taught, Jen and Megan were fre-
quently observed checking in with each other about how a particular
activity went or to compare notes about a student’s progress.
Heteroglossic Spaces at Multiple Levels

At Hamilton Elementary, school-wide practices were designed with
emergent bi/multilinguals in mind. First, Danielle hired only teachers
who had completed or at least begun their ESL or bilingual education
endorsements in order to ensure that all teachers were prepared to
work with the school’s steadily increasing population of emergent bi/
multilinguals. Second, every class was taught by two teachers to keep
the student–teacher ratio low and to help ensure instruction was
aimed at students’ abilities. Third, teachers at the same grade level
jointly planned and formed “buddy classrooms,” which involved a sys-
tem of sharing and switching students between EMI and bilingual
classrooms to ensure that emergent bi/multilinguals and English-
monolingual peers had regular, meaningful opportunities to interact.
The extent of collaboration was determined by each set of buddy-class-
room teachers. To support collaboration, the principal also created
time for co-planning by scheduling specials (e.g., music, art, gym, tech-
nology) for buddy classrooms at the same time.
In the case of the focal buddy-classroom teachers, they not only
shared and switched students for daily specials and occasional commu-
nity-building activities but also for science and social studies lessons to
encourage student interaction during core content-area instruction.
During co-planning time, the focal EMI and bilingual teachers were
observed to pool expertise, problem solve around specific students’ sit-
uations or progress, and coordinate their buddy-classroom instruc-
tional time.
School-wide practices impacted classroom instruction, especially
switching and sharing students in buddy classrooms, and opened
spaces for EMI classroom teachers to engage and affirm students’ full
semiotic repertoires. The following excerpt is representative of the
interactions between emergent bi/multilinguals and English-monolin-
gual peers in the EMI classroom during buddy classroom instruction.
As shown below, students used English and Spanish in concert with
multimodal resources to collaboratively construct a circuit during a
science unit.
Sara: El dos ¿d

o nde tiene que ir? [Where does the two go?] (holding up the
number two component)
528 TESOL QUARTERLY

Juan: Entonces no hay ninguno que . . . [So then there’s not one that . . . ]
Ana: (as Sara places the number two component on the circuit board) Last
and final piece!
Sara: There’s something missing.
Juan: ¡Es la unica
switch! ¡Es la unica
switch! [It’s the only switch. It’s the
only switch!]
Ana: What does this say? (looking at the instructions booklet)
Lucy: (checking the motor) It’s on!
Sara: We need the battery.
Ana: I think so.
Juan: Mira. [Look] (pointing to the diagram of the motor and battery)
Ana: Sı , creo que eso es. [Yes, I think that’s it.]
In the EMI classroom, the teachers often created spaces for collabora-
tive, student-driven conversations like these. In the above example,
even though one student in the group did not understand Spanish
(Lucy), everyone participated as the activity encouraged the use of all
their semiotic repertoires for meaning making. The layered interjec-
tions in English and Spanish closely followed their movements and ref-
erences to the circuit board, components, and the instruction booklet
in English. As they were close to completing their circuit (“where does
the two go?,” “the last and final piece!”), they realized that they had a
problem (“there’s something missing,” “it’s on,” “we need a battery”).
In view of the history of subtractive schooling practices that strip bi/
emergent bilinguals of their linguistic and cultural assets (Bartolome,
2014), it is not insignificant that the task described above engaged stu-
dents in using all the resources available, including each other, and
their full semiotic repertoires. Opportunities like these encourage stu-
dents to voice their observations in their own words and languages,
ultimately contributing to a multilingual classroom environment that
nurtures dialogue.
This case provides an example of school-level educational policies
that open up ideological and implementational spaces for multilingual
education, even within EMI settings (Hornberger, 2005; Hornberger &
Johnson, 2007). At Hamilton Elementary, English-medium classrooms
are not necessarily English-dominant. Because of the system of buddy
classrooms, teachers who might not otherwise teach many emergent
bi/multilinguals, and students who might not otherwise interact with
as many linguistically and culturally diverse peers, learn to adapt to
and expand their educational community. That said, diligence is

needed by teachers to ensure students’ successful participation. In the
EMI classroom, teachers, through their careful instructional decisions
—including how they switch students and set up group work—and stu-
dents, through their involvement in meaning-focused collaboration,
are agentive and ultimately successful in sustaining an ideological
space in which different languages and modes of expression are
viewed as resources (Hornberger, 2005; Hornberger & Johnson, 2007;
Ruız, 1984).
Multilingual Children Make for Multilingual Learning
What supported the school-wide practices and classroom instruction

described above was a shared vision of serving emergent bi/multilin-
guals. Over her seven-year leadership, through hiring practices and
curricular decisions, Danielle had cultivated ideological and imple-
mentational spaces that enhanced the education of emergent bi/mul-
tilinguals. For schools to adequately support these students with
effectiveness and equity, Danielle contended, “you really have to pay
attention to the demographics of your school.” Danielle’s familiarity
with the school’s evolving student population with regard to language
background, country of origin, refugee status, length of time in the
country, socioeconomics, and other characteristics, was the starting
point for “responsiveness to the individual students and responsiveness
to the larger group.”
The assets-based philosophy espoused by Danielle was shared by
many teachers at the school, including Jen and Megan. In various set-
tings, they designed opportunities for learning that affirmed and lever-
aged their students’ bilingualism. For example, in the fourth-grade
after-school homework program, Jen initiated the activity of reviewing
flash cards in students’ home languages, thus recognizing their bilin-
gualism and encouraging their agility in expressing content area skills
and knowledge in multiple languages. She invited students to review
flash cards with her in their home languages when they had finished
their assignments or as a brief skill and drill before math homework.
Regardless of students’ proficiency in their home languages and famil-
iarity with numbers, Jen insisted on the importance of affirming their
home languages and their knowing that she cared. Jen herself neither
spoke much Spanish nor knew the other languages her students
spoke, yet she was mindful of the importance of home-language devel-
opment for learning an additional language, and of continued support
of home languages for the families’ well-being, thanks to her training
in second language acquisition and her knowledge about the families’
desire for their children to maintain their home languages.
530 TESOL QUARTERLY

Jen and Megan also created opportunities for students to make
strategic use of their multiple languages throughout the regular
instructional day. They were passionate about providing literacy
instruction in which students could see their diverse languages and
cultures reflected in the reading material. Hamilton Elementary
boasted three book rooms, one entirely in Spanish, with extensive col-
lections of readers that teachers could use for small group instruction.
Jen claimed that this was how they were able to “reach kids exactly
where they’re at and then you teach them from there.” They also paid
a great deal of attention to the texts available to their students in their
classroom library. On one particular occasion during independent
reading time, a Spanish-speaking student, Omar, picked a book from
the classroom library entitled My Abuelita (Johnston, 2009). It was not
a traditional bilingual book with the same text in two languages on
each page. Rather, My Abuelita selectively incorporated Spanish to
reflect the particular nuances of words and phrases in Spanish that
the narrator wanted to capture (e.g., “her face is as crinkled as a dried
chile”). As part of this assignment of making text-to-self connections,
Omar used sticky notes to signal the references from his own life and
about his own abuela that he associated with the imagery and charac-
ters in the book.
Using multiple languages in the same utterance is a normal discur-
sive practice for bilinguals (Garcıa, 2009b). Teachers can encourage
this practice to support emergent bi/multilinguals in language and
content-area learning even if they do not have proficiency in all or any
of their students’ home languages (Langman, 2014). Despite their lim-
ited multilingual abilities, Jen and Megan established rapport with all
their students in multiple contexts both in and outside of class, design-
ing instruction in small literacy groups, and providing relevant materi-
als in ways that affirmed students’ bi/multilingualism. Positioning
themselves as learning from and with students helped Jen and Megan
create a more dialogic environment in which students’ learning was
not contingent upon knowing only English, but rather on the strategic
use of the totality of their selves and semiotic repertoires.
DISCUSSION
There are several key issues raised by the two cases. First, although
the teachers were not bi/multilingual themselves, they were able to
construct heteroglossic spaces in which students’ semiotic repertoires
were valued and capitalized on for enhanced learning. In the Oakville
case, the teacher initially opened up such spaces in science, a content
area in which she was well versed, creating pathways through which

students could express their science knowledge without relying solely
on their English verbal abilities. Then, based on her long-term obser-
vations, she came to appreciate the diversity of the semiotic repertoires
of her emergent bi/multilingual students and became able to imagine
the possibility of incorporating their home languages into formal
instruction in bilingual read-alouds. This activity not only benefited
the emergent bi/multilinguals who acted as language experts but also
their monolingual peers, who came to develop an awareness of mean-
ing making in languages other than English. Thus, these instantiations
of heteroglossic space simultaneously allowed content learning to
become more accessible to emergent bi/multilinguals, highlighted
their bi/multilingualism, and helped their monolingual peers to rec-
ognize bi/multilingualism as an asset and resource.
By comparison, the Hamilton case demonstrates a more sustained
heteroglossic practice at the school level in which the normative sepa-
ration between mainstream and bilingual classes was broken down in
order to intentionally create heteroglossic spaces for learning and
teaching. Guided by her social justice orientation, the principal
enacted her vision of an inclusive approach to educating emergent bi/
multilinguals by making strategic decisions. First, she hired only teach-
ers with ESL or bilingual education credentials. Second, she imple-
mented a two-tiered system of collaboration: coteaching in each of the
EMI and bilingual classrooms as well as in EMI-bilingual buddy class-
rooms; both of these strategies were intended to encourage teachers
to become more reflective and intentional with respect to their prac-
tice. By using the daily co-planning time, the teachers from the EMI
and bilingual buddy classrooms had frequent opportunities to discuss
a range of topics, including the progress of individual students, the
coherence of lessons across their classes, and strategies to incorporate
multiple languages in instruction. These conversations, in turn, helped
make what might otherwise have been isolated instances of heteroglos-
sia more systemic and sustained. In these ways, teacher collaboration
was continuously fostered through co-planning, while greater intermin-
gling of students and teachers of various linguistic and cultural back-
grounds was also promoted through the arrangement of buddy
classrooms. The monolingual teachers in the EMI classroom created
activities and selected texts that affirmed their emergent bi/multilin-
guals’ home languages which was made possible by their knowledge
about second language acquisition and in-depth knowledge about the
students’ families.
These differences between the two cases point to issues concerning
the scope and sustainability of heteroglossic practice in K-12 EMI set-
tings. In her earlier work, Hornberger (2005) characterized ideological
and implementational spaces as “practices” that are sustained over
532 TESOL QUARTERLY

time; however, from these contrasting cases we see that, although a sus-
tained thoroughgoing implementation is the ultimate goal, significant
progress can be made through small moves towards this goal. Impor-
tantly, in the Hamilton case, the principal systematically encouraged a
culture of collaboration through institutionally arranging buddy class-
rooms and co-planning time; as a result, providing equitable education
for all students and striving for heteroglossic practice became a shared
goal for all the staff at the school. By comparison, the Oakville case
illustrates how heteroglossic moments can occur spontaneously as stu-
dents initiate them in real time; it also shows how such heteroglossic
spaces have the potential to benefit all students. Yet, for these moments
and spaces to develop on a larger scale teachers need to be responsive
to student-initiated interests and noticings, engaging them in further
intentional dialogue; they also need to take risks in accepting their own
vulnerabilities when they encounter initially unfamiliar resources intro-
duced by their emergent bi/multilinguals.
Despite the differences in scope and sustainability between the
heteroglossic practices in the two cases, what they both illustrate is the
feasibility of monolingual teachers enacting such practices even when
they lack proficiency in their emergent bi/multilinguals’ home lan-
guages. Several factors seem to have helped to make this possible.
First, the teachers did not rely solely on communication in English to
engage students in learning. They designed tasks that were multilin-
gual, multimodal, and hands-on; students engaged in group work dur-
ing science lessons, drawing on semiotic repertories that involved
writing, speech, singing, and visual representations. Second, the
heteroglossic spaces were co-created by students and teachers together.
In both cases, while the teachers strategically orchestrated opportuni-
ties for student-led work, it was students themselves who took them up
and developed them. Furthermore, acting agentively, students trans-
formed their own learning through multilingual and multimodal
meaning making.
CONCLUSION
As we hope to have shown, EMI does not mean instruction in “Eng-

lish only.” It can take many shapes and forms, depending on factors
such as the educational visions of individual teachers, institutional cir-
cumstances, and student demographics and age. Admittedly, we were
only able to provide brief glimpses of the classroom practices of a
small number of teachers in their specific institutional contexts. Never-
theless, the two cases show that, at both the classroom and school
level, EMI can be a setting in which diverse ways of meaning making

are embraced and developed in action, even while English remains
the overall medium of instruction. Based on our critical sociocultural
perspective on education, we believe that while it is important to
encourage students to use their full semiotic repertoires in order to
increase their engagement in content-area learning, it is equally
important for teachers to recognize that students’ use of their semiotic
repertories is interconnected with the development of their person-
hood (Freire, 1970/2002; Stetsenko, 2008). Such practices on the part
of teachers also help students become global citizens who are capable
of negotiating linguistic and cultural differences and of being creative
in their meaning making, using all the tools available.
In heteroglossic classroom spaces such as those we have described,
learning starts with students’ lived experiences and interests rather
than with externally imposed requirements, and students are encour-
aged to be active contributors to the classroom commu-
nity’s knowledge building. Such spaces are also characterized
by dialogues that draw upon diverse ideas, languages, and modes of
expression. In this regard, heteroglossic practice can be envisaged as
constituting a cline with respect to the extent to which multivoicedness
(Bakhtin, 1981) is allowed. This ranges from a minimal commitment
to multilingual and multimodal pedagogy, realized in the uptake of
serendipitously occurring opportunities, to more systematic and sus-
tained implementations, in which the envisioned practice is articu-
lated, shared, and supported at both the classroom and the school
level. It is this form of sustained enactment that we advocate. However,
to achieve this, system-wide uptake is necessary. Nevertheless, sponta-
neously arising heteroglossic moments should be valued and built
upon so that teaching gradually becomes more heteroglossic.
Based on the preceding discussion, we would like to suggest several
implications. First, one promising direction for future research would
involve examining the effects of heteroglossic EMI classes for both emer-
gent bi/multilinguals and English-monolingual students. Such an
inquiry might be pursued longitudinally, investigating issues such as
how each group of students develops language skills and/or attitudes
with respect to multilingualism. Second, while located at different points
on the developmental cline mentioned above, the two cases that we have
presented show that some degree of heteroglossic classroom practice is
an achievable goal, even when the teachers involved do not themselves
speak the language(s) of their emergent bi/multilingual students. Thus,
even without formal institutional support, individual teachers can start
by making small, incremental steps, creating heteroglossic classroom
spaces when opportunities arise. Then, building on this basis, they can
gradually scale up their enactment, ideally working collaboratively with
colleagues and sharing their ideas. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, for
534 TESOL QUARTERLY

more sustainable, systematic practices to become established, it is critical
that support be provided at the institutional levels of individual schools
and school districts (Lucas, Henze, & Donato, 2004).
Not surprisingly, some monolingual teachers have difficulty imagin-
ing what it is like to be bi/multilingual, and so they do not feel they
are in a position to utilize students’ home languages in their teaching
(French, 2016). Nevertheless, it is important to find ways to help
them overcome this challenge. However, based on the cases presented
here and on other research (e.g., Flores & Schissel, 2014; Garcıa &
Wei, 2013), two things seem to be essential: first, an orientation
towards valuing multilingualism as an asset and, second, the incorpo-
ration of emergent bi/multilinguals’ semiotic repertoires in classroom
activities. It is also important that, in parallel, teachers develop what
Canagarajah (2013) calls translingual dispositions—mindsets that con-
sider the use of multiple languages and multimodal resources to be
an integral part of instruction. However, this overall orientation
towards multilingualism is only a first step. It needs to be augmented
by the development of concrete strategies for using multiple lan-
guages and modalities in formal instruction. An example of this two-
tiered approach can be found in a project conducted by the City
University of New York New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilin-
guals (CUNY-NYSIEB), which aims to help staff in participating K-12
public schools to understand how bilingualism can be an asset and to
learn how to develop it through multilingual pedagogy (Ascenzi-Mor-
eno, Hesson, & Menken, 2015). The outcomes reported by CUNY-
NYSIEB have involved both organizational and instructional changes,
including the reorganization of school structure in order to make the
school-wide enactment of multilingual pedagogy possible (e.g., all
grade-level teachers’ planning together) and helping monolingual tea-
cher participants incorporate translanguaging as part of their instruc-
tional practice. However, in addition to these desirable outcomes
from CUNY-NYSIEB, we would further recommend that, while the use
of emergent bi/multilinguals’ home languages in instruction is impor-
tant, teachers should also take advantage of students’ full semiotic
repertoires, particularly the use of multimodal resources, not solely
relying on their linguistic abilities.
The two presented cases, together with the positive outcomes of
CUNY-NYSIEB, point to the important role that teacher educators in
TESOL and bilingual education programs can play in helping preser-
vice and in-service teachers understand the value of multilingualism
and to develop the skills for proactively using bi/multilinguals’ semi-
otic repertoires in instruction. For it to be effective and sustainable,
the enactment of heteroglossic practices in EMI settings needs to be
addressed both at the classroom and school level, as has been

emphasized by researchers with a focus on language policy (e.g., Flores
& Schissel, 2014; Hornberger & Johnson, 2007; Menken & Garcıa,
2010). Positive dispositions towards heteroglossic practices, together
with concrete strategies to enact them, need to be nurtured at the
school and district levels and supported by the involvement of universi-
ties and/or community organizations in the collective effort to support
emergent bi/multilingual students.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to extend their sincere gratitude to students, teachers, and
administrators at Oakville Elementary and Hamilton Elementary for their willing-
ness to share their experiences and participate in the respective research projects.
The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful
feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript and the co-editors of the special issue
for their helpful comments and consideration throughout the process. Any errors
or omissions remain the responsibility of the authors.
THE AUTHORS
Alissa Blair is an assistant researcher with the Wisconsin Center for Education
Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests include
language use in and outside of school, bilingual education, and family engage-
ment practices that support multilingual children and youth.
Mari Haneda is an associate professor of World Languages Education and Applied

Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University. Drawing on qualitative research and
discourse analytic methods, her scholarship has focused on the education of K-12
emergent bilingual students, L2 literacy development, language and identity, ESL
teachers’ practices, and teacher education.
Frances Nebus Bose is a doctoral candidate at Pennsylvania State University. Her

research draws on poststructural and new materialist perspectives to explore op-
portunities for engaging in literacies in classrooms and schools with young chil-
dren identified as English learners.
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Blair Et Al. (2018) Reimagining English Medium Instructional Settings As Sites of Multilingual and Multimodal TESOL Quarterly - 2018 - Blair

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15457249, 2018, 3, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tesq.449 by Desi Arinda - <shibboleth>-member@monash.edu.au , Wiley Online Library on [12/03/2023].

Challenging the notion that English-medium instruction (EMI) is

516 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2018

REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 517

CRITICAL SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON

518 TESOL QUARTERLY

TOWARD HETEROGLOSSIC IMPLEMENTATION SPACES

From the critical sociocultural perspective reviewed above, for emer-

REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 519

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 521

SECOND-GRADE ENGLISH-MEDIUM CLASSROOM AT

This case focuses on ways in which a second-grade teacher and her

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Opening up Heteroglossic Spaces: Blogging Science

It was in Caitlin’s science lessons that the use of multimodal

REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 523

being able to express themselves using the semiotic resources of the

Acting as Language Experts: Bilingual Read-Alouds

Despite the two girls’ successful participation in the experiment,

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 525

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FOURTH-GRADE ENGLISH-MEDIUM CLASS AT

REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 527

Heteroglossic Spaces at Multiple Levels

Sara: El dos ¿d

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 529

Multilingual Children Make for Multilingual Learning

What supported the school-wide practices and classroom instruction

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 531

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As we hope to have shown, EMI does not mean instruction in “Eng-

REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 533

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 535

Mari Haneda is an associate professor of World Languages Education and Applied

Frances Nebus Bose is a doctoral candidate at Pennsylvania State University. Her

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 537

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REIMAGINING ENGLISH-MEDIUM INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS 539

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