Introduction

Ofelia Garcia eschews the notion of pedagogies that cater for specific language groups, instead advocating for a focus on the singularity of individual students within a classroom characterised by multiple linguistic practices. Within prevailing teaching practices in many mainstream educational teaching settings, additional language learners experience serious challenges in achieving high literacy levels and literacy engagement. In relation to literacy education, there are critiques of literacy education being limited to English monolingual assumptions, and marginalising multilinguals and multilingualism. When teachers open up instructional spaces for multilingual and multimodal forms of pedagogy, languages other than English are legitimised in the classroom and students' home languages and community connections become resources for learning. The majority of teachers recognised the role of students' plurilingual repertoires as potential funds of knowledge. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.