Paulo Freire and Multilingual Education

Book excerpt: This collection celebrates the work of Paulo Freire by assembling transnational perspectives on Freirean-based educational models that reconsider and reimagine language and literacy instruction, especially for multilingual learners. Offering an international and comparative overview of Freire’s theories and critical pedagogies in relation to multilingualism, this volume presents innovative analyses and applications of theories and methods and features case studies in public schools, after-school and community literacy programs, and grassroots activism. Part I features chapters that expand on Freire’s concepts and ideas, including critical literacies, critical consciousness, and liberatory teaching principles. Part II features chapters that discuss empirical analyses from applied research studies that draw from these philosophical concepts, making important connections to key topics on supporting students, curriculum development, and teaching. Ideal for students and scholars in language education, bilingual/multilingual methods, and sociology of education, the volume informs teacher knowledge and practice. In offering alternative paradigms to our dominant, homogenized monolingual status quo, the chapters present a shared vision of what multilingual literacy can offer students and how it can transform educational spaces into sites of imagination, creativity, and hope.