Text II

De-encapsulated Bilingual Education in Brazil: Multicultural Breakfasts and Translanguaging Kids

In Brazil, when we talk about bilingual education, we are talking about two very different realities. Children and youth from minoritarian and underprivileged groups such as immigrant, indigenous or deaf communities make up one group, as Antonieta Megale (2019) points out. The other is children of wealthy people who learn another language to further enhance their privileged participation in society. Brazilians seem to cultivate a notion of monolingualism and, although there are more than 200 languages spoken in the country (Maher, 2013), they seem to be made invisible, which reinforces a denial of cultural diversity in the country (Monte Mór, 2002). We believe that education should provide expansive new modes of effective participation in society to offer students the chance to increasingly develop forms of insertion in the world and means to transform their mobility. The expansion of mobility should imply the creation of language practices at school which can lead to the reflection of life through a large range of possibilities of understanding concepts, content and knowledge through diverse sources as well as through various semiotic resources and multiple languages. As part of the Global South, Brazilians must figure out ways of teaching in a multilingual perspective to lessen human suffering, as suggested by Ofelia García (2019). Thus, bilingual education in Brazil should involve breaking with modules imposed by educational parameters or cultural biases, which impose a mono-ideology that makes it difficult to move in the direction of a multi/ intercultural perspective. Turning to the challenges presented by globalization, especially in a country with extreme social differences such as Brazil, we must become critically aware of the ways in which schools position themselves regarding local and global issues. When teaching and learning practices enable connections between such issues and the learners’ different realities and needs, change and transformation are more likely to occur.

Aiming at showing how some schools in Brazil are striving to implement multicultural and multilingual practices, distancing themselves from the prescribed curriculum and the traditional separation between languages, we will describe an example taken from Multicultural Breakfasts, a research project carried out at Esfera Escola Internacional, a bilingual school in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. The methodology was based on critical collaborative research (Magalhães, 2011), in which researchers are included as active participants in the search for shared solutions. Discourse analysis was used to reveal how language was materialized in the participant’s interactions. Although the majority of the students at Esfera are Brazilian, about 15% are from other countries, thus creating a diverse linguistic landscape. Four teachers, coordinators and students made up the research group for the year. The school follows an inquiry-based curriculum, which is organized through transdisciplinary projects in the primary years. To begin their inquiries and provoke questions for exploration, the students read migration stories of children from around the world. They later explored their own family stories of travel and change, and connected them to how the Brazilian people were formed. Making room for further questioning and critical thinking, the students also looked at how migration movements have been affecting people and places in Brazil and the world today. As a performance task, the students invited their parents to breakfast at school, with typical dishes from their countries of origin, and presented their new understandings using different resources and the languages of their preference.

The Multicultural Breakfasts’ example helps us understand how dynamic language practices and de-encapsulation can support teaching and learning, while also enabling agency and social transformation. Ofelia García (2009, p. 9) asserts that “Bilingual education in the twenty-first century must be reimagined and expanded, as it takes its rightful place as a meaningful way to educate all children and language learners in the world today.” She proposes that the dynamic language practices that take place in the social environment should have a place in bilingual schools, to enhance learning and transform conditions of social injustice. The complex networks of language practices in which children interact today are no longer supported by linear language instruction. Knowing how to interact dynamically and collaboratively in this new reality is a challenge faced by the new generations and, consequently, a goal for bilingual schools. The traditional notions of languages as distinct and pure systems should be replaced by fluid visions of language for a society in constant movement, as pointed out by Jan Blommaert (2012). When two or more people who don’t share a common language interact, they sometimes rely on language fragments or diverse semiotic resources to communicate. There is a scenario of intense mixture of languages, in which different repertoires are necessary.

Similarly, the dynamic framework (García, 2009) considers language as repertoire, created through the lived experience of language (Busch, 2012; 2015). It presupposes language not as something one owns, but as something one does. In this perspective, interaction is based on the integration and not separation of languages and resources, an understanding associated with the notion of translanguaging. In the Multicultural Breakfast sessions, translanguaging is made visible through the various resources mentioned by participants in their interaction with researchers, including, for instance, the use of technology to assist communication and understanding. Translanguaging is characterized by the interconnected ways in which individuals select and use their language resources from a unitary linguistic repertoire to negotiate and create meaning. Translanguaging can be understood both as a theoretical lens and a pedagogical approach, when teachers intentionally plan for and use fluid language practices in the classroom. In this sense, translanguaging also lends itself to de-encapsulation, according to Sara Vogel and Ofelia García (2017).

The distance between how the curriculum is presented in schools and how it can be explored in real life has motivated studies in the field of de-encapsulation (Liberali et al., 2015, Liberali, 2019b). Traditionally, schoolwork generates individual changes in ways of knowing and being. From the perspective of de-encapsulation, these changes occur collectively and through a variety of cultural artifacts. This process of de-encapsulation allows for school curriculum to be understood as opportunities for problem posing and solving, creating enhanced possibilities for learning outside of the disciplines, the teaching resources and the school itself (Liberali 2019a, 2019b). De-encapsulation builds on the notion of an ecology of knowledges (Santos, 2006) as central to environments where creativity, innovation and transformation flourish. De-encapsulated practices challenge pre-established truths and value multiculturalism, through an open and continuous process of construction and deconstruction, which results from the interactions between people of different cultural backgrounds. It is not limited to the acceptance of various cultures but is characterized by a movement of appreciation and approximation between them, a disposition which should also be addressed in schools (Freire, 2003). The Multicultural Breakfasts project can be viewed through the lens of de-encapsulation, as it aimed to approximate learners to the real world, through events that connected to the reasons for exploration and immigration. While exploring these concepts collaboratively, learners also learned about the formation of the Brazilian people and addressed national standards. De-encapsulation is not only about creating context and connection, but also how different perspectives are valued, in an intentional effort to create meaning and enable agency and transformation.

CLEMENSHA, S.; LIBERALI, F. De-encapsulated Bilingual Education in Brazil: Multicultural Breakfasts and Translanguaging Kids. ReVista, 19 (2), 2020. Available at: https:// revista.drclas.harvard.edu/de-encapsulated-bilingual-education -in-brazil. Retrieved on: January 6, 2026. Adapted.