Translanguaging for Equity and Justice in Assessment: A Systematic Review

This systematic review examines how translanguaging has been integrated into educational assessment, a domain historically dominated by monolingual norms. Drawing on 33 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2023, we employed an inductive–deductive coding approach to analyze how translanguaging is enacted across assessment types and its implications for teaching, learning, and equity. The literature was concentrated in North America. Findings reveal affordances of translanguaging assessments including more authentic demonstrations of knowledge, deepen content learning, affirm multilingual identities, and reduce linguistic anxiety and challenges including perceptions of illegitimacy, systemic policy constraints, and resource inequities. We argue that translanguaging provides a transformative framework for reimagining assessment as a socially just practice that validates multilingual repertoires. To capture the varied engagements with equity, we conceptualize translanguaging assessment as an epistemological and political stance along a spectrum of justice. The spectrum ranges from access and inclusion to structural transformation to highlight how scholars frame translanguaging within assessment as descriptive practice, pedagogical equity, political resistance, and systemic reimagining. We call for more geographically diverse and methodologically varied research to sustain translanguaging’s impact and inform systemic change.