Legitimizing Plurilingual and Pluricultural Identities: Designing an Arts-Infused Cultural-Historical Activity System

Abstract

Widespread monolingual practices have often overlooked the plurilingual and pluricultural skills of superdiverse children – skills such as their ability to draw on linguistic and cultural competencies – in both formal and informal educational settings. However, arts-based multimodal activities can help reveal children’s “invisible” linguistic and cultural assets while simultaneously fostering language and literacy development. This paper presents a design-based study that integrated arts-based tools, plurilingualism, and communities of practice in the implementation of a 16-week after-school program for superdiverse children in Western Canada by using a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) lens. Multiple interviews were conducted with 32 students (grades 2–5) in the program, and 222 arts-based artifacts along with 69 field note entries were collected through weekly observations. Visual and thematic analyses of the data revealed that many children embraced plurilingualism, took pride in their transnational and religious identities, and expressed motivation to become language teachers and cultural brokers. Despite these successes, resistance to plurilingualism, limitations in the available tools, and tensions within the program’s power structure persisted. The findings highlight the potential of design-based research and CHAT and offer important implications for integrating arts-based, plurilingual, and multimodal designs into literacy activities that can challenge persistent monolingual practices in schools.

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