Background to study:
A critical incident observed during a presentation workshop illustrated for me a lack of inclusivity endemic within the university. There were seven home students and one Chinese. The Chinese student sat alone at the front, so I asked the student to sit with the others so that she could participate in group work. However, the home students worked together and still excluded the Chinese student (Holmes, 2025a). The refusal of the home students to be inclusive inspired me to devise a translanguaging intervention to optimize the potential for multicultural communication (Garcia, 2009, p.140).
This activity involved students to handwriting in their own language on a whiteboard (see fig 1) and then building a discussion around this, which also aims to focus attention away from the digitally mediated space and into the classroom space, and responds to discussions I had with PG Diploma Fashion course leader Tim Williams regarding strategies to develop an approach to (machine) translation (see IP blog: Holmes, 2025a; ARP blog 2: Rationale).
Fig. 1. Example translanguaging fashion – Language Development MA Strategic Fashion Marketing – LCF October 2025
Having completed, revised and cleared the Ethical Action Plan (see links below) with tutors and course leaders and implemented the intervention with 6 PG Fashion Business School cohorts, I find myself in the “swampy lowlands,” of the research process (Schön, 1983 in Cook, 2009, p. 279). How should I construct my question, and which strategies should I use to try and answer it?
Ian Holmes_Ethical Action Plan 2025-26.docx
Revised Version:
I wanted to understand students’ attitudes and feelings about the legitimacy of the intervention, how this may facilitate or constrain this pedagogy in practice, and why this might be. Interviews or focus groups may provide more nuanced data, however questionnaires offer greater reach and anonymity.
Through conversation with colleagues and tutors, I learn that others have similar dilemmas, but, that to overcome this, I could in fact employ both methods – this will give opportunity to reach more students -anonymously and in person – (see figure 2 for data sets).
Whilst we still don’t know what will happen or how exactly we will get there, having reflected on this moment, I feel that I am more confident to begin the ascent into the foothills.
See full post ‘A view from the swamp’ in Appendix.
Fig. 2 Final Data sets for ARP
Research Question:
How do students’ expressions of attitudes and feelings about participating in a multilingual translation intervention act as indicators of the underlying *doxa and *habitus that facilitate or constrain the development of a transformative and inclusive multilingual identity and learning environment?
- *Doxa – taken-for-granted assumptions of the social world that typically conceal power relations’ (Bourdieu, 1993)
- *Habitus – habits of perception, classification, appreciation, feeling, and action (Bourdieu, 1977)
Objectives:
To evaluate the validity of using the ‘multilingual backgrounds of students (and *tutors) as a pedagogic resource and as a legitimate part of classroom and creative practice’ (Odeniyi, 2022, p. 73).
Develop a transformative and multilingual identity and learning environment at UAL.
*the first action research cycles focuses on student participants – however the future cycle will also include educators.
Action Plan for ARP:
(500 words)
References:
Cook, T. (2009) ‘The purpose of mess in action research: building
rigour though a messy turn,’ Educational Action Research, 17- (2)- 277-291, DOI:
10.1080/09650790902914241
García, Ofelia (2009). ‘Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century.’ In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 128-145
Holmes, I.D. (2025a) IP Unit_ Reflective Report. Available at: https://pgcertianholmes2025.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/07/15/intervention-reflective-report_-fostering-inclusivity-in-the-international-multi-lingual-multi-cultural-university-space/ (Accessed 12 December 2025)
Odenayi, V. (2022) ‘Reimagining Conversations,’ Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/359339/Reimagining-Conversations_FINAL.pdf (Accessed on 26.09.2025)
Schön, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books.