Playworld Translanguaging: A place-based approach for translanguaging play pedagogy in early childhood

Conceptualised from a vision to honour children’s languages, agency and cultural ways of knowing, this research presents findings from a place-based translanguaging play pedagogy for early childhood called Playworld Translanguaging. In the remote Kimberley of Western Australia, researchers collaborated with educators in a Kindergarten/Primary/Yr 1 class of mostly Aboriginal children who have Bardi Jawi as their ancestral language, co-designing ways to revitalise this language through play pedagogy in ways intimately connected to place. Our Playworld Translanguaging approach reimagined Conceptual PlayWorlds (Fleer, 2018) with the intention of integrating pedagogical translanguaging. Following Indigenist research principles, critical participatory action research (CPAR) was the selected methodology, drawing on Rigney’s (2020) epistemic view of the Aboriginal child as a knowledge producer and recognising language and culture embodied in place as assets for learning. Of significance, Playworld Translanguaging provided an authentic affordance of a playful literacy approach that encompassed place-based pedagogy for language and literacy learning. The approach enabled participating children to draw on their cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge, and identity, to inform the co-construction of play, offering the potential to challenge thinking on how educators can authentically draw on, and build upon, children’s language in educational settings to investigate both who they are and what they know.