Translanguaging as pedagogical justice: local languages, participation, and inclusive learning in Indonesian schools
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67490/ijled.v1i3.1051Keywords:
Inclusive learning, Local languages, Pedagogical justice, Student participation, TranslanguagingAbstract
Background: Indonesia’s linguistic diversity creates persistent tensions between national-language schooling, local-language recognition, and equitable participation for multilingual learners across geographically and institutionally unequal educational settings. Objective: This study examines how translanguaging practices configure linguistic repertoires, participation pathways, epistemic access, and pedagogical justice in Indonesian schools. Method: A qualitative documentary corpus design analysed 21 verified public documents and 30 bounded evidence units through repertoire–function analysis, a participation and epistemic access matrix, and a pedagogical justice alignment rubric with explicit evidence-strength controls. Results: Local-language-first bridging constituted the most frequent pedagogical configuration, indicating that regional languages commonly mediated comprehension before transition toward Bahasa Indonesia across cases. Expanded participation appeared when learners questioned, retold, reconstructed stories, manipulated materials, and joined multilingual simulations, whereas most evidence reflected conditional access rather than redistributed authority. Selective inclusion and structural support were more prevalent than justice-oriented practice, showing that policy recognition and multilingual accommodation did not consistently produce epistemic validation. Implication: Inclusive multilingual pedagogy requires alignment among linguistic recognition, student agency, teacher uptake, assessment design, materials, and institutional protection. Novelty: This study advances a justice-oriented framework that distinguishes instrumental bridging, selective accommodation, structural enablement, and justice-oriented translanguaging while preserving differences among primary records, scholarly evidence, and policy context.
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