Using Linguistic Landscapes to Challenge Monolingual Norms in ELT

I was walking across a school yard, a few days ago, in one of the schools where we send out students to get their first experience of teaching. School yards are noisy, with children chatting, playing, flirting and quarreling. In most schools I visit, all this activity is in Greek, even when many children have different linguistic backgrounds (I once counted 13 different native languages in a school I visited). In this case, the chatter was a mix of Greek and Romani, which was unusual in my experience, not because the language is uncommon, but because it’s rarely tolerated in schools.

A football came flying onto my back, a couple of children came running to me to apologise, in Greek, and then they run away laughing and saying something in their first language. Not long after that, I was sitting with those children at the back of a classroom, watching a teacher lecture about conditional sentences in English. Few children seemed to engage with the lesson, and occasionally hands would go up, and students would ask for permission to visit the bathroom, in Greek. The teacher frowned, told them to ask in English, and let them go if they made an effort. I remained unconvinced that this helped them become better at English, or even develop some kind of positive attitude towards the language.

This blog post is, in part, inspired by this visit, which to me is symptomatic of several questionable assumptions we tend to make the importance of monolingual practice as a teaching process in language education. It is also inspired by an article I just read, Creating multilingual schoolscapes in restrictive ELT contexts,¹ by Brigitta Schvarcz and Amber Warren, which provides an alternative to this monolingual way of approaching language education.

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Some background

In many parts of the world, language classrooms remain shaped by an enduring belief in the primacy of English-only instruction, a practice variously described as ‘monolingual fallacy’ (Phillipson, 1992)² or a ‘monolingual habitus’ (Gogolin, 1994). Despite decades of research advocating for more inclusive approaches (e.g., Cummins, 2000; Hornberger, 2003; García, 2009), the assumption persists that monolingual practices foster better results.

Yet this assumption does more harm than good. When we exclude local or heritage languages from educational settings, we do not just deny learners the opportunity to draw on their full linguistic repertoires; we are also implicitly asking them to disavow parts of their identity.

In recent years, a growing body of research has helped to challenge these assumptions and reframe multilingualism not as a problem to be managed, but as a resource to be cultivated. To list some examples from my own work, in a recent collaboration with Eleni Motsiou, we explored how family language policies are negotiated in mixed-language households, often informally and in subtle ways that resist dominant norms (Kostoulas & Motsiou, 2022). In earlier work, I have also argued for viewing classrooms and language institutions as complex systems, in which even seemingly small acts (such as, e.g., switching languages or introducing multilingual signage) can have transformative effects (Kostoulas, 2018). Together with Juup Stelma, we have further examined how purposeful teacher action shapes teaching and learning in TESOL, which suggests that teachers can create spaces for multilingual meaning-making, even when constrained by policy or institutional culture (Stelma & Kostoulas, 2021).

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The linguistic landscapes study

I will concede that much of the work I have done in this area focuses on problematising, rather than proposing solutions, and I will also readily admit that this is not always the most productive way forward. This was partly why I was excited to read an article, Creating multilingual schoolscapes in restrictive ELT contexts, by Brigitta Schvarcz and Amber Warren, which has just appeared at the ELT Journal. In this article, the authors take up these issues and complements the theoretical concerns that appear elsewhere in the literature with a practical illustration of how we might move forward. In what follows, I provide a structured summary of the article, highlighting how it contributes to our understanding of multilingual practice in schools and how it speaks to broader debates in language education.

What this study is about

The article focuses on the notion of the “schoolscape” (i.e., the visual and linguistic landscape of the school environment), a term that refers to a space where multilingualism can be enacted and made visible. Schvarcz and Warren’s study explores how English language teachers and their students co-construct multilingual schoolscapes in settings where institutional policy explicitly mandates monolingual (i.e., English-only) instruction. The central research question the authors pose is quite provocative: How do teachers and students make use of symbolic resources to bring multilingualism into classrooms that are, officially at least, monolingual?

This question is especially relevant in educational systems that continue to associate English with economic mobility, modernity, and global belonging, while relegating local or regional languages to informal or domestic spheres. Schvarcz and Warren argue that multilingual schoolscapes can challenge these hierarchies, not necessarily through overt political action, but through the quiet, everyday work of making other languages visible and legitimate within the classroom space.

What the study involved

The study took placein two secondary-level English classrooms in different countries (Israel and the USA), each operating under policies that discouraged or prohibited the use of local languages during English lessons. Despite these constraints, both classrooms featured a range of multilingual visual materials, created collaboratively by teachers and students.

What the study found

In addition to these visual elements, the study documented the use of local languages in classroom interactions. Teachers sometimes used students’ first languages to clarify instructions, manage classroom routines, or explain difficult concepts. Students, in turn, felt encouraged to express themselves more fully and confidently when their linguistic backgrounds were acknowledged. These practices, although subtle, contributed to a shift in classroom culture, from one of linguistic exclusion to one of multilingual affirmation. As noted in the article:

Ms. Fjord reported a noticeable increase in students’ willingness to participate in English lessons, particularly among those who had previously been hesitant or withdrawn. 

One of the most striking findings of the study is the sheer variety of multilingual artefacts that emerged in these ostensibly monolingual spaces. Teachers and students created hand-made posters, vocabulary lists, and classroom signs that featured both English and the local language. These artefacts served not just functional purposes, such as defining terms or giving instructions, but also symbolic ones: i.e., affirming the legitimacy of the students’ linguistic and cultural identities.

Challenging monolingualism through intentional action

Perhaps most importantly, the study found that these practices were not accidental, but rather fell under what Juup Stelma and I labelled purposeful activity. Here’s an example:

Ms. Rivers structures participation opportunities strategically. She initially invites newer students to respond in their home languages, with her providing the English vocabulary term. For students who have been in her classroom for several months, she creates scaffolded opportunities to translate their own responses, supporting their growing bilingual abilities. Throughout the lesson, she maintains a running chart of key vocabulary in English, visible to meet policy requirements, while the rich multilingual discussion serves as a temporary but powerful scaffold for comprehension.

What the study showed is that teachers acted with clear pedagogical and ethical motivations: they wanted their students to feel seen, to feel understood, and to learn more effectively. In doing so, they were not ignoring institutional policy, but rather reinterpreting it in ways that served the needs of their learners. In this sense, the creation of multilingual schoolscapes functioned as a form of quiet resistance, a way of reshaping the boundaries of what is possible within restrictive educational frameworks.

Even within constrained environments, teachers can initiate changes to their Linguistic Landscapes that nurture multilingual awareness and build inclusive communities.

Schvarcz and Warren (2025)

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Looking at the bigger picture

The findings of this study resonate deeply with the broader body of work that critiques the monolingual ethos in ELT. In our 2022 paper, Motsiou and I observed how families often resist monolingual language ideologies through everyday acts of translanguaging and negotiated meaning-making. What this new study suggests is that similar acts of resistance are possible, and indeed already occurring, within institutional educational contexts as well.

They also align with the idea that classrooms, far from being neutral or uniform spaces, are dynamic systems in which language, identity, and power are constantly being negotiated. From a complex systems perspective (Kostoulas, 2018), we might understand multilingual schoolscapes as emergent outcomes of teacher and learner interaction, i.e., outcomes that arise not through top-down policy, but through the collective agency of those within the system.

Finally, the intentional nature of these multilingual practices recalls the work that Stelma and I have done on the role of agency and purpose in language education. Teachers in this study were not simply reacting to their circumstances; they were acting on deeply held beliefs about inclusion, learning, and justice. By doing so, they opened up new spaces for their students to engage not only with English, but also with themselves and their communities.

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An invitation

I found the article on multilingual schoolscapes is both inspiring and instructive. It reminds us that meaningful change in language education does not always require sweeping reform. Sometimes, it begins with a poster. Or a greeting. Or a decision to honour a student’s voice in the language they know best.

With that in mind, I would like to invite readers of this blog to share their own experiences. Have you experimented with multilingual signage in your classroom? Do your students mix languages in ways that enhance their learning or sense of belonging? Have you found ways to incorporate linguistic diversity into the visual and spatial environment of your school?

If you have stories, reflections, or images to share, I would love to hear from you in the comment section. Let’s start a conversation (and perhaps even a repository?) of multilingual practices that challenge the monolingual norm from within.

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