Co Learning through Translanguaging in Early Childhood Chinese as a Second Language: A Case Study of Strategic Multilingual and Multimodal Pedagogy in a Hong Kong Kindergarten

Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on Modern Research in Education, Teaching and Learning

Year: 2026

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Co Learning through Translanguaging in Early Childhood Chinese as a Second Language: A Case Study of Strategic Multilingual and Multimodal Pedagogy in a Hong Kong Kindergarten

Dr. Chingching Cheung, Leung Wai Mun

ABSTRACT:

Translanguaging highlights learners’ and teachers’ ability to mobilize multilingual, multimodal, multi-semiotic, and multisensory resources to make meaning. Yet little is known about how multilingual kindergarten teachers leverage translanguaging to shift pedagogical stance and achieve specific communicative goals in Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) classrooms.

This case study examines how a Hong Kong kindergarten teacher constructs a translanguaging space to co-learn with culturally and linguistically diverse children. Classroom interactions were analyzed using Multimodal Conversation Analysis, and findings were triangulated with video-stimulated recall interviews analyzed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Drawing on the teacher’s iterative reflections and fine-grained analyses of interactional excerpts, the study shows that translanguaging functions as a central resource for knowledge construction and cultural learning in multilingual early childhood CSL settings.

The study offers practical implications for the strategic orchestration of multilingual and multimodal repertoires to support ethnic minority children’s learning of Chinese language and culture, and for teachers’ adaptive role-shifting—from instructor to facilitator and co-learner—within translanguaging spaces.

Keywords: Translanguaging , Multilingual Pedagogy, Language Education, Early Childhood Education, Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Learners