Translanguaging as a Cognitive Scaffold: A Learner-Centric Pedagogical Innovation for Equitable Learning in Hindi-Medium Classrooms

Translanguaging as a Cognitive Scaffold: A Learner-Centric Pedagogical Innovation for Equitable Learning in Hindi-Medium Classrooms Dr. Vikash Singh* Language is not merely a medium through which educational content is delivered; it is one of the principal resources through which learners construct meaning, organise experience and participate in classroom knowledge. In multilingual educational contexts, however, learners frequently encounter a gap between the language they use in everyday life and the language through which formal academic knowledge is presented. Hindi-medium classrooms provide an important context for examining this issue because, despite Hindi functioning as the formal medium of instruction in many educational settings, learners often possess complex linguistic repertoires involving regional languages, dialects, Urdu, English and other languages. Conventional classroom practices frequently treat these linguistic resources as separate systems and may regard movement between them as a deficiency, distraction or lack of proficiency. Translanguaging offers an alternative pedagogical perspective by recognising learners’ entire linguistic repertoire as a resource for thinking and learning. This conceptual article examines translanguaging as a cognitive scaffold and develops a learner-centric pedagogical framework for its use in Hindi-medium classrooms. Drawing upon sociocultural theories of learning, scaffolding, multilingual education and translanguaging scholarship, the paper argues that purposeful movement across languages can reduce conceptual distance, activate prior knowledge, facilitate metalinguistic awareness, strengthen learner participation and create more equitable pathways to academic knowledge. The article distinguishes pedagogically planned translanguaging from unstructured language mixing and proposes a six-stage LEARN Translanguaging Framework- Listen, Elicit, Associate, Reconstruct, Apply and Negotiate. * Assistant Professor, Department of B.Ed., V.S.S.D. College, Kanpur