An academic in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences has penned a chapter in an international book about the value of multilingualism in education.
Sithembele Marawu, the faculty’s Language Co-ordinator, has contributed a chapter in the book, The Multilingual Edge of Education, which was published recently by Palgrave Macmillan.
Marawu says the book emanated from the International Conference on Urban Multilingualism and Education which was held at Ghent University, Belgium in 2013. Subsequent to the conference, he was asked to develop the paper into a book chapter.
“My chapter is about the value of code-switching as a pedagogical resource,” he says. “It’s based on classroom discourse and it analyses the communicative repertoire of a teacher as they interact with learners in both English and IsiXhosa.”
The chapter, under the title “Teaching in two languages: the pedagogical value of code-switching”, emphasizes that the learners’ mother tongue is a pedagogical resource and is in contrast to the dominant view that indigenous languages don’t have a role to play in pedagogy.
“All languages can be used in education,” he argues. “We’re still perpetuating the colonial hegemony which imposed English as the only language of teaching and learning.”
He adds that it feels good to have his paper selected for inclusion in the book which boasts some of the leading scholars in the field of bilingual or multilingual education such as Jim Cummins, Piet van Avermaet and Kathleen Heugh.
“The book is relevant as it says multilingualism is a resource that can be used in classrooms for educational purposes.”
The book can be ordered online and its chapters can also be bought separately.
Marawu has just completed his PhD degree at Rhodes University and will be graduating next month.
He adds that later during the year, he hopes to publish articles based on his doctoral thesis which investigated classroom code-switching as a pedagogical resource in multilingual classroom settings.
Written by Kwanele Butana
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