Language beyond flags: Teachers misunderstanding of translanguaging in preschools

Based on an analysis of the video recording and transcript of one lesson chosen by preschool teachers in Luxembourg as an example of translanguaging pedagogy, this article shows the teachers’ limited understandings of translanguaging. As a result of a new 2017 multilingual education policy for early childhood, the first author designed a professional development project in which the teachers in this preschool participated. During a lesson, the teachers insisted that these young children had a home language associated with a national affiliation depicted by a flag, despite the children themselves telling them repeatedly that their home language practices were complex and included Luxembourgish, which was part of their identity. The teachers’ actions and discourse reveal raciolinguistic ideologies and misappropriation of the term translanguaging to simply implement what could be better described as a multilingual awareness activity. On the surface, the teachers have shifted from monolingual instruction to one that recognizes the children’s multilingualism. Yet, teachers continue to associate the notion of language with flags and political states, instead of taking up an inside-view of the bilingual speaker, the kernel of translanguaging theory.