‘It helps bridge gaps’: translanguaging as a pedagogy for inclusion at a community language school

Translanguaging is increasingly used to describe how multilingual users make meaning by drawing across languages and modalities, and has been advanced as a socially-just pedagogy. Yet, recent criticisms around conceptual clarity and originality raise concerns about how it is understood and enacted. To explore whether and, if so, how (1) teachers’ understandings of translanguaging inform their pedagogy, and (2) translanguaging practices shape participation, one Italian and two Spanish language teachers at a university-hosted community language school in York, UK, were invited to complete a questionnaire, and their lessons were audio-recorded over two months. Thematic analysis of teacher accounts and interactional episodes shows broad endorsement of translanguaging, both in principle (as a stance valuing multilingual meaning-making) and in practice (where planned instructional strategies blend with co-learning and responsive shifts). Teacher-led translanguaging enhanced target-language comprehension and engagement, while learners across varying proficiency levels treated translanguaging as the classroom norm, drawing on different languages and semiotic resources while pursuing language-specific goals. Breaking away from the target-language-only dogma, this community language school offers a compelling example of how translanguaging can serve as a context-responsive pedagogy for inclusion.