Planned and emergent translanguaging: aligning teacher design and student practice in Thai multilingual classrooms

This study examines how teachers and students in multilingual Thai secondary classrooms design, enact, and experience translanguaging during English language lessons. Drawing on classroom observations, video recordings, field notes, and stimulated-recall interviews, the study investigates how teachers deploy translanguaging to support comprehension, participation, and classroom management and how students use translanguaging as they learn. Findings show that teachers engaged in both planned translanguaging, such as bilingual task sequences and intentional L1 scaffolds, and spontaneous switching for interactional purposes. Students, however, used Thai and Isan fluidly and instinctively to negotiate meaning, collaborate with peers, and manage affective demands, often without perceiving their practices as strategic. The study affirms Cenoz and Gorter’s (2021). Pedagogical Translanguaging. Cambridge University Press) pedagogical translanguaging framework while revealing a gap between teacher-designed scaffolds and students’ emergent multilingual practices. These insights highlight the pedagogical value of integrating students’ lived linguistic repertoires and challenge monolingual norms in English language education. Implications for translanguaging-informed pedagogy, theory, and research in multilingual and multicultural settings are discussed.