Determinants of Translanguaging Pedagogy Acceptance and Uptake in Multilingual University Classroom Discourses

In this paper, I explore the determinants of university students' acceptance and use of translanguaging in multilingual classrooms in Johannesburg, South Africa. Students in this context have largely been socialised into normative monolingual pedagogies that favour English. However, recent research has seen a paradigm shift, which highlights the limitations and inadequacies of these approaches in multilingual classes, where the language of instruction is not the mother tongue of most students. Research has also highlighted the benefits of translanguaging in such settings, benefits that transcends academia. While studies on translanguaging are gaining traction, there is a paucity of research that reflects on the determinants of translanguaging acceptance and uptake. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the study used a qualitative interpretive approach. Two focus group interviews consisting of seven and eight participants respectively, were conducted. Findings reveal that several factors determine translanguaging acceptance and uptake, and these include prior experience in translanguaging, aligning home languages to languages of the classroom, student-parent/guardian attitudes towards Indigenous languages, and intellectualisation of Indigenous languages and resource development, among others. The study emphasises that the efficacy and effectiveness of translanguaging in learning and teaching alone is insufficient for its successful implementation in this domain. It is hoped that these results contribute towards ensuring that measures are put in place to harness, and fully realise, the benefits offered by translanguaging in multilingual classrooms discourses.