Documentary screening: ‘Bilingual education and (Trans)languaging for learning in the South’
Carolyn McKinney & Dr Robyn Tyler
Open to registered ISB participants only. No prior registration needed.
This 45minute session includes the screening of the documentary film: Free to Learn: Soze ungayibambi! (directed and produced by Kate Ahrends) followed by a Q & A discussion session with two of the participants, Dr Robyn Tyler (Centre for Multilingualism & Diversities Research, University of the Western Cape, SA) and Prof Carolyn McKinney (School of Education, University of Cape Town, SA).
Shot in township schools on the periphery of urban Cape Town, the documentary film Free to Learn: Soze ungayibambi! focuses on the challenges and opportunities of bilingual education in public schooling in South Africa. While the country has 12 official languages and an enabling multilingual language in education policy, a monolingual approach where English becomes the medium of instruction from year 4 onwards has been the policy implemented in schools. Given the huge difficulties that learners face in accessing the curriculum (as evidenced in high failure and drop out rates) as well as the national policy that enables bi/multilingual education, the film explores some of the barriers to implementation of bi/multilingual education. It also documents two case studies of bilingual education interventions, in poorly resourced primary and high schools where pedagogical translanguaging is encouraged. The two cases are the product of collaborative intervention and research projects between the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research, University of the Western Cape and the School of Education, University of Cape Town. As we look towards the formal incremental implementation of mother tongue based bilingual education (MTBBE) from 2025, the film provides important insights into the potential of (trans)languaging-for-learning in South African schools. The film screening (19 minutes) will be followed by an open Question & Answer discussion with the audience (25mins). Prof Carolyn McKinney and Dr Robyn Tyler will lead the discussion.
BIOS
Carolyn McKinney is Professor of Language Education (School of Education, University of Cape Town). Her research and teaching focus on ideologies of language and literacy, language in education policy and bi/multilingual education in the Global South. She recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (2nd ed, 2024) and Decoloniality, Language and Literacy: Conversations with Teacher Educators (2022, Multilingual Matters). She is a founding member of the bua-lit language and literacy collective advocating for the use of African languages and multilingualism in education: www.bua-lit.org.za
Dr Robyn Tyler is a senior researcher in the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) at the University of the Western Cape. Robyn supervises graduate students and is a member of the bua-lit language and literacy collective (www.bua-lit.org.za). Her research and teaching focuses on multilingual learning, translanguaging, school language policy, biliteracy, bilingual learning materials development, language across the curriculum and research methodology. Robyn leads the NRF-funded Bilingual Learning Materials Project (2024-2026) working on trialling bilingual learning materials in two Cape Town primary schools. She recently published a monograph with Multilingual Matters entitled: Translanguaging, coloniality and decolonial cracks: Bilingual Science Learning in South Africa. (2023) and edited a special issue of Multilingual Margins entitled: Ukuzilanda within decolonial learning and teaching (2024).