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ISSN 2640-1533s

Open Access

Editorial Team

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 i

Global Journal of Transformative Education
Volume 3, April 2022

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© GJTE. 2022. GJTE is a peer-reviewed Open Access journal produced as part of the  
IU ScholarWorks system, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

Editors-in-Chief
Michael T. Ndemanu, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Serafín	M.	Coronel-Molina,	Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Managing Editor
Tom J. McConnell, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA

Editorial Board
Kennedy N. Bota - Masinde Muliro University of Science & Technology, Kakamega, Kenya
Judah M. Ndiku - Masinde Muliro University of Science & Technology, Kakamega, Kenya 
Wilfridah M. Mucherah - Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Daniel Baron - The Bloomington Project School, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Teresia Mbogori - Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
James Kigamwa - Literacy International, Neward, Delaware, USA
Alissa Mwenelupembe - National Assoc. for the Education of Young Children, Washington, DC, USA 
Sarah Haisley - Ivy Tech Community College, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Seema Lasi - Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
David Roof - Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Lynne Stallings - Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Hugo Yuhsiu Lee - United Nations, New York, New York, USA
Sherilynn Jordan - Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA 

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Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3  
ISSN 2640-1533s

Open Access

ii

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© GJTE. 2022. GJTE is a peer-reviewed Open Access journal produced as part of the  
IUScholarWorks system, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

Multiple Perspectives on Tranformative Education

Articles 

Transforming Education from Theory to Practice: Daring to  
re-imagine and re-innovate - Third Volume of the Global Journal 
of Transformative Education      ...............................................................................................................         1
           Michael T. Ndemanu & Serafín M. Coronel-Molina, Editors-in-Chief

The Little Red Hed and a Corona Giant: Creative Storytelling as a 
Transformative Strategy in an Early Childhood Classroom   ..................................................         3
          Ilfa Zhulamanova & Jill M. Raisor

Literary Review of Translanguaging, Translating, and  
Interpreting in Education   ........................................................................................................................      15     
           Corinne Gentry 

Transforming Syllabus Design: Maximizing Learning 
Outcomes in Higher Education   ..............................................................................................................      25
          Michael Ndemanu

Book Reviews

Caralyn Zehnder, Cynthia Alby, Karynne Kleine, Julia Metzker. (2021). 
Learning that Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design  
for Transformative Education    ..............................................................................................................      34
          Zhaoyi Zhang
 
Nana	Osei-Kofi,	Bradley	Boovy,	&	Kali	Furman.	(2022).	Transformative	approaches	
to social justice education: Equity and access in the college classroom    ......................      38
           Michelle A. Medved

In Memoriam   .....................................................................................................................................   43

Open Call for Papers     ......................................................................................................................................   44
          GJTE Editors
   

Contents

Global Journal of  
Transformative Education

Volume 3, April 2022



Ndemanu, M. T., & Coronel-Molina, S. M.  
Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.34349

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Ndemanu & Coronel-Molina. 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 
Attribution NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), 
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

Transformative Education from Theory to Practice:  
Daring to Re-Imagine and Re-Innovate
Third Volume of the Global Journal of Transformative Education

Michael T. Ndemanu1 and Serafín Coronel-Molina2 

     Editors-in-Chief, Global Journal of Transformative Education

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

According to the Transformative Learning Theory 
developed by Jack Mezirow (1991), connecting theory 
with practice is vital because transformative learning 
occurs during the connection process. A theory can be 
defined as a set of assumptions or hypotheses about 
a reality. In other words, it is a mental map represent-
ing the world (Granick, 2005; Knapper, 2000). Mean-
while practice can be defined as something that one 
does. Theory can inform practice because it provides a 
rationale for a decision or action to be taken. It is often 
modified based on the outcome of practice. Theory, 
therefore, should inform practice and vice versa. It is 
within this theory to practice framework that articles 
for this issue were framed.

For this volume, out of several manuscripts submit-
ted, three were found to meet the standards and rigors 
of transformative education ideals as enunciated on our 
website, www.gite.education and were closely aligned 
with the current theme. The articles focus on diverse 
topics ranging from creative storytelling as a transfor-
mative education strategy, transformative syllabus de-
velopment approaches to translanguaging in the K-12 
classroom.  The contributions are relevant to scholars, 
educators, practitioners, educational policymakers, 
graduate students, and grassroots organizations inter-
ested in transformative education across the globe. The 
first article, titled The Little Red Hen and a Corona Giant: 
Creative Story-telling as a transformative Strategy in an 
Early Childhood Classroom, is authored by Zhulamanova 
& Raisor. These authors find storytelling to be instru-
mental not just in communication, but also as a way for 
kindergarteners to display a great depth of comprehen-
sion. The study details the use of a creative storytelling 
strategy implemented in an early childhood classroom 
which was interrupted by the COVID-19

pandemic. The end result is a two-phase study which 
concluded with pre-kindergarten aged children using 
storytelling to discuss and display their perceptions of 
Coronavirus in an academic setting. In the article on 
translanguaging, Gentry, the author, shares the findings 
of a research on translanguaging, translating, and inter-
preting in K-12 classrooms. 

The second article is Literary Review of Translan-
guaging, Translating, and Interpreting in Education, by 
Gentry. The author defines translanguaging as the act 
of using the two languages strategically to maximize 
communication during the learning process. It is used 
as an interactive tool among those who are not yet 
proficient in the dominant language. Translanguaging 
is fast becoming a universal practice in K-12 school 
districts with high immigrant population in spite of the 
perennially lingering English-only policies. The need 
for translated documents and the importance of hiring 
interpreters to sustain translanguaging practice is em-
phasized in this article. 

In the third article, Transformative syllabus design: 
Maximizing learning outcomes in higher education, 
Ndemanu discusses the contours of developing a 21st 
century course syllabus that empowers students in 
the learning process to become critical thinkers, prob-
lem-solvers, innovators, and collaborators. The author 
draws from transformative learning theory to provide 
detailed information on the characteristics of a sylla-
bus, its universal components, interpreting course code, 
uses of a syllabus, accessibility, and backward design. 
He also draws from Bloom’s taxonomy to offer a prag-
matic guide to syllabus creation with concrete examples 
on how instructors can employ a backward design ap-
proach for syllabus development to effectively create a 
syllabus of a course they have never taught before. The 
author concludes by reiterating that the overarching 
emphasis of teaching with a syllabus is to promote



Ndemanu & Coronel-Molina - Vol 3 Intro: Theory to Practice Page 2 

higher-order thinking and deeper learning in higher ed-
ucation because a syllabus that promotes such practices 
and knowledge transfer maximizes learning outcomes. 

This issue encompasses two book reviews of recent 
high-impact texts on transformative education. The 
first text is: Caralyn Zehnder, Cynthia Alby, Karynne 
Kleine, Julia Metzker. (2021). Learning that Matters: A 
Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Educa-
tion. In this text reviewed by Zhaoyi Zhang, the authors 
argue that in today’s 21st century, the traditional way 
of teaching has mostly given way to transformative 
education in which teachers should not only impart 
knowledge, but also facilitate the acquisition of skills 
by students (David, 2016). Educators in transformative 
education play the role of helping students to under-
stand and acknowledge “the dynamics between their 
inner and outer worlds” (Boyd & Myers, 1988, p.261). 
This book provides guidance to teachers in the higher 
education system to help them design courses that can 
create meaningful learning experiences for students 
and actively engage them in social issues. 

The second book is: Osei-Kofi, N., Boovy, B., & Fur-
man, K. (Eds.). (2022). Transformative approaches to 
social justice education: Equity and access in the college 
classroom. It was reviewed by Michelle A. Medved. The 
book documents the Difference, Power, and Discrimina-
tion program at Oregon State University which has been 
enlightening undergraduate students on social justice 
education for 30 years. Born out of student advocacy 
and the faculty that supports them, the program is an 
established collection of diversity education courses 
and faculty training seminars. The program has sur-
vived budget cuts, critics, and other challenges through-
out its 30 years. Transformative Approaches to Social 
Justice Education describes the methods of the program 
pragmatically and unflinchingly so readers of the book 
can apply them to their classrooms.

Acknowledgments
The Global Journal of Transformative Education 

(GJTE) is a singular publication venue since its main 
objective is to share educational research and re-
search-based practices on transformative education 
from local and global perspectives. Despite the great 
amount of time and effort we have invested in the con-
ceptualization, development, implementation, produc-
tion, and publication of this third volume, we could not 
have done all this by ourselves. The publication of this 
volume is the result of the hard work and dedication of 
many people. First of all, our profound gratitude goes

to the Global Institute for Transformative Education 
(GITE) and its founding members for their sustained 
sponsorship to make this volume happen. We are deep-
ly thankful to Tom J. McConnell, who provided us with 
invaluable assistance in his role as Managing Editor, 
taking care of the daily operations of GJTE. We are also 
grateful to our colleagues who serve on the Editorial 
Board, as well as to institutions, friends, colleagues, and 
social media networks from around the world for their 
help in publicizing the GJTE website and Facebook page 
widely. We would also like to thank all the contributors 
to this second volume for choosing GJTE to publish 
their work. Many thanks to IUScholarWorks for host-
ing GJTE’s website. Without the generous assistance 
and contribution of all these great people and institu-
tions, GJTE would never have become a reality.  We are 
equally grateful to our colleagues worldwide who spent 
significant number of hours reviewing the papers. We 
thank them for their time and diligence in the review 
process. We also owe an immense debt of gratitude to 
Fred Bay for his continuous generous donations to GITE 
for transformative education conferences, which have 
been the springboard of GJTE. 

References
Bell, D. V.J. (2016). Twenty-first Century Education: 

Transformative Education for Sustainability and Re-
sponsible Citizenship. Journal of Teacher Education 
for Sustainability, 18(1), 48-56.

Robert D. Boyd & J. Gordon Myers. (1988). Transfor-
mativeeducation. International Journal of Lifelong 
Education, 7(4), 261-284. 

Granick, J. (2005). A Deeper Look at Theory and Practice. 
International Association of Sufism.

Knapper, C. K. (2000). Lifelong Learning in Higher Edu-
cation (3rd ed.). London: Kagan Page. 

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative Dimensions of Adult 
Learning. Jossey-Bass.

Authors1 Michael T. Ndemanu (mtndemanu@bsu.edu) is an 
Associate Professor of Education in the Department of 
Educational Studies at Ball State University, Muncie, 
Indiana, USA.
2 Serafín M. Coronel-Molina (scoronel@indiana.edu) is an 
Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and 
Instruction at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 
USA.

Authors

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

https://ias.org/departments/sufipsychology/spf-articles/a-deeper-look-at-theory-and-practice/


Abstract

Storytelling is a natural means of communication between generations and is deeply rooted in culture. In 
today’s classrooms, the act of storytelling is often overshadowed by a narrow focus on academics. However, 
storytelling could be viewed as a means of transformative education by creating autonomous, independent 
thinkers as demonstrated in this manuscript. Children can use storytelling as a way to demonstrate depth of 
understanding, apply critical thinking skills, and to be active learners in their own education. This study details 
the use of a creative storytelling strategy implemented in an early childhood classroom which was interrupted 
by the COVID-19 pandemic. The end result is a two-phase study which concluded with pre-kindergarten aged 
children using storytelling to discuss and display their perceptions of Coronavirus in an academic setting.

Keywords: Storytelling, Early Childhood Education, COVID pandemic

Zhulamanova, I., & Raisor, J. M.
Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.32098

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Zhulamanova & Raisor, 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you give 
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

The Little Red Hen and a Corona Giant:
Creative Storytelling as a Transformative Strategy  
in an Early Childhood Classroom

Ilfa Zhulamanova and Jill M. Raisor

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

Introduction
Storytelling is deeply rooted in the belief that 

children learn through stories verbally shared across 
generations and often involving an interesting mixture 
of folklore and history. In today’s classrooms, the act of 
storytelling is often overshadowed by a narrow focus 
on academics in classrooms. However, children can use 
storytelling as a way to demonstrate depth  of their 
understanding, thinking, lived experiences and needs. 
For example, compare the following two teaching 
strategies. First, a book is read to children which might 
be disconnected from their lives and prior experienc-
es while encouraging passive listening skills (Global 
Institute for Transformative Education, 2021). Second, 
the same story is shared through a storytelling strategy 
where the children are given the opportunity to ac-
tively engage, take ownership, and construct their own 
meanings from the content. The second example clearly 
demonstrates the type of transformative education we

hope to encourage in classrooms. The overarching goal 
of this study was to use a storytelling as a creative strat-
egy in an early childhood classroom to open space for 
children for “dialoging” (Bakhtin, 1984) with the world 
to express themselves, their emotions and feelings, and 
lived experiences in a creative way.

The following manuscript details the use of a 
creative storytelling strategy implemented in an early 
childhood classroom which was interrupted by the 
COVID-19 pandemic. The end result is a two-phase 
study which concluded with pre-kindergarten aged 
children using storytelling to discuss and display their 
perceptions of Coronavirus.

Literature Review
Oral storytelling is an ancient and may be the 

earliest form of teaching. It serves a dual purpose of 
entertaining and transmitting cultural beliefs and val-
ues from one generation to the next in many cultures 
including Latinx (Melzi, Schick & Scarola, 2018) and 
African American (Champion, 2003). Under-studied in



Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy Page 4

education (Hibbin, 2016a), it continues to maintain 
cultural practices and traditions over time, socialize 
children into their cultures, and aid their overall de-
velopment (Barton & Barton, 2017; Landrum, Brak-
ke, & McCarthy, 2019; Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 
2019). Storytelling attracts children to books (Ritchie, 
James-Szanton, & Howes, 2003) and excite the imagi-
nation, involve the listeners, and motivate children to 
try storytelling themselves and create their own tech-
niques (Morrow, 2020).

Storytelling is a form of transformational education 
that helps children to understand dynamics between 
their inner and outer worlds and the expansion of 
consciousness and the working toward a meaningful 
integrated life as evidenced in authentic relationships 
with self and others” (Boyd & Myers, 1988, p. 261). 
What is storytelling? The National Council of Teachers 
of English (NCTE) has provided a definition of oral 
storytelling as “relating a tale to one or more listen-
ers through voice and gesture” (Teaching Storytelling, 
1992). This simple definition considers the inherently 
social nature of storytelling that requires a listening 
audience to fulfil its definitional requirements. It also 
tacitly invokes the oral nature of storytelling whereby 
the tale is ‘related’ and not ‘read,’ and the emphasis 
upon ‘voice and gesture’ implicitly denies the use of a 
script. Bromley (2019) defines an oral story as any text 
that is imaginative, a retelling of a story or a recount of 
an experience.

Traditional storytelling in an early childhood class-
room is a product of students interacting socially with 
the elements in a book (Lisenbee & Ford, 2018). An ex-
ample of a traditional storytelling activity comes from 
research conducted on early childhood students expe-
riencing the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, 
1987; Ford, 2009). These early childhood students 
enjoyed performing the book in addition to exploring 
the life cycle of a caterpillar through literacy centers.

In the profession of early childhood, storytelling 
was promoted by teacher researcher Vivian Paley 
(Copper, 2019). In Paley’s classroom, children dictate 
and dramatize their stories. Research findings sug-
gest that Paley’s storytelling approach to teaching and 
learning positively affect young children’s vocabulary 
and language skills and can serve as a feasible alterna-
tive to the skills-dominant and teacher-neutral early 
literacy curricula increasingly prevalent in pre-school 
classrooms around the country (Nicolopoulou, 2019; 
Ripstein, 2018). Moreover, as da Costa, Davim, Barbosa, 
& da Silva (2016) state storytelling has the power to

improve a child’s oral language skills, writing, and in-
crease their vocabularies. More recent research (Gard-
ner-Neblett & Sideris, 2017) conducted with children 
who are African American has found that the ability 
to tell a clear and coherent story is important for the 
development of reading skills.

Storytelling significantly increases children’s 
literacy skills along with self-regulation of emotions, 
communication and negotiation with peers, imagina-
tion, fantasy, humor, and creativity  (Maureen, Van der 
Meji & De Jong, 2018). Dyson (2009) highlights how 
as young writers tell stories they appropriate others’ 
voices (from home, school, community and media), 
thus expanding their knowledge about social practices, 
symbolic systems and their social world. There is differ-
ence in cognitive requirement between the experience 
of picture-book reading and that of storytelling, ac-
cording to neuroscience research (Ten, Van der Putten, 
Penne, Maes, Vlaskamp, 2016; Miyuki, Sachie, Satochi, 
Masato, Kazuto, Hirooki & Sinichi, 2018). The experi-
ence of storytelling requires more demanding level of 
active imagination from listeners. When the brain is 
active, concentration and attention are at work which 
contributes to information retention and comprehen-
sion. Thus, the difference in the prefrontal activation 
between the picture-book reading and the storytelling 
may reflect the difference in the cognitive demands for 
the act of imagining.

While storytelling is a practice common to all 
cultures and most children enter school with a basic 
understanding of narrative form (Meek, 1988), it is not 
widely accepted practice as compared to story reading. 
Speaking and listening is implicitly devalued as a result 
of the elevation of instrumental literacy-based practice 
in the primary curriculum (Hibbin, 2016b). Typically, 
schools place importance on the development of narra-
tive skills in writing but provide few opportunities for 
children to create and tell stories orally, once children 
become writers (Dawkins & ONeill, 2011).

In a busy curriculum-focused environment, the 
strategy of storytelling allows space and time to stop 
and listen to students in meaningful and purposeful 
way, while facilitating their learning (Bromley, 2019; 
Cooper, Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007). It is a 
transformative approach as it challenges students to 
be active rather than passive learners. Storytelling 
approach encourages students and teachers to think 
critically and requires communities to rethink curricu-
la to create space for students to analyze the universe 
(Global Institute for Transformative Education, 2021).

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Page 5

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

Free-ranging, teacher-scaffolded activities, storytelling 
activities and curriculum in the early childhood class-
room validate who the children are, what they know, 
and what they care about. Thus, “the need for early 
childhood teachers to retain their historical focus on 
oral language-based curricula that are directed at fair 
and equitable goals for young children—like the story-
telling curriculum—has never been greater” (Cooper, 
Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007, p. 273).

Ironically, the study itself mirrors the unpredict-
ability of researching during the 2019 Coronavirus 
pandemic. Our research quest was to learn how chil-
dren respond to stories presented through storytelling 
strategies involving two-step method: 1) presenting 
a story to children using puppet show and 2) inviting 
children to respond, orally or in drawings, by re-telling 
the presented story or by creating their own stories. 
The working definition of storytelling in this study is 
oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a story-
teller, and taught to children. The study detailed in this 
manuscript emphasizes the importance of storytelling.

Theoretical Framework
In this study, we draw upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s 

(1895-1975), literary and cultural theorist and philos-
opher’s work that emphasizes plurality of voices. In es-
sence, Bakhtin’s work is concerned with the oppressive 
character of monologue, the monopolization of mean-
ing, and the ruling out and suppressing of all compet-
ing voices. To counteract a “monologue” of prescribed 
preschool curricula driven by developmental norms 
and academic standards and standardized practices like 
book reading, we aimed to build upon the voices and 
stories of young children to allow them to learn and 
transform through creative literacy, play and perfor-
mance. Like Bakhtin, we believe that life is an ongoing, 
finalizable dialogue taking place at every moment of 
human existence.

“To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask 
questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so 
forth. In this dialogue a person participates whol-
ly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, 
lips, hands, souls, spirit, and with his whole body 
and deeds… He invests his entire self in discourse, 
and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric 
of human life, into the world symposium” (Bak-
tin, 1984, pp. 292-293).

Such a view imposes difference, uncertainty, play-
fulness, surprise, and open-endedness as necessary, 
positive, and productive aspects of human condition 
(Sterritt, 1998). However, what crucial to Bakhtinian 
dialogue is a finely tuned sense of listening. Bakhtin 
believed that by not listening we reject, disrespect, and 
disempower the speaker and the message. When we 
listen to children, we empower them. We learn about 
their inner thoughts, emotions, fears, anxiety, and joys 
through the act of storytelling. Transformative educa-
tion such as this displays a dramatic shift in views of 
teaching and learning, a shared ownership in education, 
a true sense of what it means to have student-teacher 
partnerships within the classroom (Global Institute for 
Transformative Education, 2021).

As the profession of early childhood education 
takes a deep interest in a more culturally sensitive, 
collaborative, strength-oriented, and empowering 
approach practices, Bakhtin’s ideas seem ever more 
prominent. In current times of uncertainty and unrest, 
there is a robust need for dialoging with and listening 
to the children we serve. Inviting children to engage in 
creating and telling their own stories is about opening a 
space for plurality of voices, innovation, wonder, poten-
tiality, freedom, and creativity that transcend monolog-
ic thinking and inform and expand traditional mundane 
classroom approaches of teaching and learning.

Storytelling Procedures
This study was conducted in two phases pre-

COVID-19 and during COVID-19. Beginning in the 
Spring 2020, three researchers visited the setting to be-
gin to establish a comfortable rapport with the children, 
classroom, and school. After obtaining families consent, 
around February 2020, the researchers introduced the 
idea of traditional storytelling to the teacher. During 
this time, once a week for five weeks, the researchers 
started the project by presenting a folk story using a 
puppet show as the main storytelling method. The sto-
rytelling technique implemented in our study comple-
mented that of Bromley (2019). The teacher told stories 
and children use teacher’s story as a springboard to 
develop their own stories.

The plan was to visit each week to engage in story-
telling activities during the circle time. After presenting 
the same story a few times, we planned to invite chil-
dren to create their own stories using the presented 
story as a springboard. The first story presented to chil-
dren was a simple version of The Little Red Hen story, 
an American folk tale meant to teach children the

Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy



Page 6

importance of hard work and personal initiative. The 
main characters used in this puppet show – the hen, cat 
and mouse – were hand-made by team members. Both 
the cat and mouse were made from wool and the hen 
was knitted using a wool thread (see Figure 1). The sto-
ry characters were available to the children afterwards 
to imitate and play with the puppets.

Figure 1. The Little Red Hen characters

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the research came 
to an abrupt halt in spring 2020 after seven visits to 
the site. The study was able to resume in fall 2020 
during COVID-19; however, many barriers existed. The 
participants were all new to the classroom and non-es-
sential visitors were not allowed in the classroom due 
to COVID-19 precautions. Therefore, research contin-
ued in an online synchronous mode through the use 
of Zoom. The children were gathered around a Swivl 
which held an iPad. Swivl is a robot which can hold an 
iPad and rotates automatically to the marker. The mark-
er is similar in shape to a remote control and allows 
for virtually interactions to feel more in sync. Minimal 
issues occurred when utilizing the technology; however, 
one concern was that the iPad screen size was limited 
for the children to view.

Study Context and Participants
The school was intentionally chosen because of its 

proximity to the researchers, openness to research, 
and a shared history with the researchers. The school 
consists of 464 students, preschool through eighth 
grade (see Table 1). The classroom is nestled within the 
preschool wing with approximately 110 children. The 
participants in phase one included 15 preschool chil-
dren. ages three and four (see Table 2). The participa-
tion rate for the class was 94%. The participants in

phase two included 11 preschool children ages three 
and four (see Table 3). The participation rate for the 
class was 85%. Additionally, one lead teacher and one 
assistant, consistent in both phases of the study, con-
tributed greatly to arranging the technology and report-
ing information back to the researchers.

Table 1. Demographics of school by ethnicity

Table 2. Demographics of participants in phase 1

Table 3. Demographics of participants in phase 2

Storytelling Technique Phase 2
Due to COVID-19 precautions, all storytelling 

times in phase two of the study, were completed vir-
tually through the use of Zoom. During phase two, 
the research team virtually presented a Corona Giant 
therapeutic story to help children to deal with anxiety 
and stress they experience with all the changes and 
adaptations they deal on a daily basis. The children 
were presented this story three times within a week 
for approximately two weeks. The children were given 
the opportunity to contribute their own stories using 
the Corona Giant as a springboard. They could share 
their stories right after the presentation or later to their 
teachers orally or in drawings.

During phase two, the research team virtually pre-
sented a therapeutic story to help children to deal with 
anxiety and stress they experience with all the changes

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy



Page 7

and adaptations they deal on a daily basis. This story, 
inserted below, was originally created by Susan Perrow 
(2012) and was slightly modified by the researchers to 
adapt to the current pandemic situation.

Corona Giant

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there lived a 
giant who was the strongest, largest, and most 
destructive creature ever to have lived on earth.

The strange thing was that no one had never seen 
the giant, but many had experienced its dark 
shadow as it traveled around the earth, leaving 
destructions everywhere. People called it the 
Corona Giant.

The Corona Giant was continually busy every day 
and night, moving around the world, stamping its 
dark presence on the Earth, in every city,s every 
village, and every home making children and their 
families stay. away from each other and making 
them feel lonely and fearful. No one knew where 
the Corona Giant lived and how to conquer it. No 
one was safe from it– not the adults or children.

The Giant, who lived high up in the Silver Castle 
above the clouds, heard news of these terrible 
events from the birds. She was very worried about 
the Corona Giant and the evil work it was doing 
on the Earth below. She decided to call a meeting 
and sent out an invitation to all the birds of the air 
everywhere in the world.

On the day of the meeting, the Giant was seat-
ed on her silver throne, beautiful in her flowing 
gown. All around here were gathered many birds: 
birds from every part of the world, birds of all 
colors and shapes and sizes, birds o the land and 
birds of the sea, birds of the day and birds of the 
night.

Patiently and carefully, the Giant listened to each 
and every bird. When all the stories had been 
told, the Giant spoke to the gathering:

“There must be a way to overcome this dark force 
that is taking over the earth. Every enemy has a 
weakness! Fly back where you have come from 
and try to find where the Corona Giant lives. 

Then you can observe what weakness it may have. 
Report back to me as soon as you can…There is 
not a moment to lose!”

 So, the birds flew back to their homes around the 
world and kept a careful watch where the giant 
lives. Days passed, weeks passed, months passed.

When it was almost a year, an old owl finally 
found the giant. He was flying high around moun-
tains searching for something to eat and flew into 
a deep dark cave. Inside this cave was a huge, 
dark, mumbling, rumbling. figure. It was of no 
definite shape. In fact, its shape seemed to change 
sizes and form with every sound it made. Some-
times, it looked like a giant red squid with many 
tentacles, other times, it turned into a scary, bear-
like figure and stomped angrily. As he stomped, 
he the repeatedly chanted these mumblings and 
rumblings:

All for me and me for all, 
Eating all things big and small.
Greed is my game and Power is my name

The owl hid in a far corner of the cave and 
watched and listened, as owls can do very well. 
Finally, the ugly, dark creature fell asleep. The owl 
quickly and quietly flew out of the deep mountain 
cave. Then, he began the long journey across the 
sky, all the way to the castle of the Giant. As he 
flew higher and higher, he kept saying the awful 
mumblings and rumblings so he would not forget 
them.

All for me and me for all, 
Eating all things big and small.
Greed is my game and Power is my name

When the Giant heard the story from the owl, she 
immediately recognized Giant’s weakness:

The Corona Giant only cares for itself - it only 
wants power for itself.

Then the Giant called for her helpers, the birds 
and she said: “Fly out around the world and sing 
this message to people. If they work together 
and care for each other, then they can slowly, but 
surely win this dark shadow that is harming the
children and families”.

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Strength in caring, strength in togetherness, 
Can overcome the giant’s selfishness.

The birds flew out to all parts of the world and as 
they flew, they sang the message from the Giant 
for all people on Earth to hear.

And to this day, the birds are signing their song. 
Sometimes they even drop feather messages 
which flatter softly to the ground. When people 
find these feathers lying on the ground (in the 
garden, on the street, or in the forest they know 
that this message has been sent directly to them. 
They pick up the feathers and they remember the 
message that has been send to them by the Giant:

Strength in caring, strength in togetherness!

And slowly but surely, the wisdom of the song of 
the birds is helping the children and adults of the 
world to overcome the dark power of the Corona 
Giant.

Data Collection and Analysis
Data in this two-phase basic qualitative study (Mer-

riam, 2002) came from children’s drawings, audio re-
cordings of children’s stories, photographs of children’s 
work, and recordings of all virtual storytelling visits 
with the children. Data collection and analysis were not 
separate processes but were interconnected and simul-
taneous (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006) to gain insight 
into the main themes that emerged from children’s 
responses to the storytelling intervention. The record-
ings, images of storytelling episodes were reviewed and 
analyzed using thematic coding and inductive analysis 
(Hatch, 2002), that promotes proceeding from specific 
to general. The two faculty researchers analyzed the 
data separately and then compared findings to validate 
thematic findings.

Findings
The overarching goal of this study was to use 

storytelling as a creative strategy in an early childhood 
classroom to open space for plurality of voices that 
transcend monologic thinking driven by adults’ agenda 
and inform and expand traditional mundane classroom 
approaches of teaching and learning. As Pushor ex-
plains, “When they come to school, they come with this 
multiplicity and contextuality, not independent of it” 
(2010, p. 7). Therefore, it is important to create a space

for helping children to express themselves and their 
lived experiences in a creative way. Storytelling is 
about innovation, wonder, potentiality, freedom, and 
creativity that arise through plurality of voices, ideas 
and perspectives. Having such space in a classroom 
challenges, expands, and transcends traditional routine 
of teaching and learning practices. The following two 
themes emerged from the data analysis: 1) Storytelling 
makes children story makers, story tellers, and story 
actors and 2) Corona and children.

Storytelling makes children story makers, story 
tellers and story actors. Children in this classroom 
always engaged in various pretend play activities using 
prompts in dramatic play area. It was observed, how-
ever, that storytelling intervention provokes children to 
play with the story prompts and imitate the observed 
presentation. Having a shared play idea, stemmed from 
the story plot, provides a topic for conservation moti-
vating children to socialize, engage, construct scenar-
ios elevating their play to mature level that results in 
learning (Bodrova & Leong, 2008). It became visible 
that storytelling intervention provokes children to play 
with the story prompts and imitate the observed pre-
sentation. The concrete prompts and story table setting 
provide some direction inexplicitly making the children 
storytellers. These items were intentionally left in the 
setting during phase 1 to encourage interaction and 
retelling of stories. Engaged in dialoguing with each 
other (see Figure 2) they either repeated the same plot 
or come up with their own remarks for the characters. 
Children carry their ideas on into their dramatic play 
and the story continues to evolve and change includ-
ing new toys, materials, and players. The conversation 
enhanced social interaction and communication among 
children.

Figure 2. Children presenting The Little Red Hen

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Analysis of data also illustrates that children use 
the presented story characters and some elements of it 
as a springboard for making stories. For instance, see 
Figure 3 below. The child created his own version of 
the Corona Giant story by twisting the plot in his own 
way. In this picture, the Corona Giant is imprisoned, 
and the queen and birds are celebrating their victory. 
It is important to notice here, that the illustrations are 
solely a product of child’s imagination since the story 
was presented orally without the text. The child “trans-
lated” the auditory information onto the paper giving 
a shape and form to story characters he envisioned in 
his mind while he listened to the story. These mental 
representations derived from his previous knowledge 
and experiences.

Figure 3. A child’s story

During the storytelling time, children immersed in 
the spirit of presented stories. The children became not 
only story makers, but story tellers and story actors as 
well. Consider the four-year old’s child’s dictated story 
below:

It is actually like the queen and the prince live is 
a mountain on a castle with bears. And the prin-
cess was actually abandoned because she stealed 
[sic] all the joy and then they found the real prin-
cess at the witch castle. And then the birds pecked 
her and then she heard it so much, and then they 
fall to the ground, and then they go back to the 
castle and then the end.

This simultaneously simple and complex creation 
indicates the author’s expressive and receptive vocabu-
lary, awareness of words in sentences, phonemic aware-
ness, and understanding of the meaning of the words. It 
has a beginning, some drama in the middle, and the end 
and represents a child’s world of thinking and living.

Children take the story ideas and words into their 
dialogues, exchanges, and act them out in their dra-
matic play by intentional storytelling. For instance, 
consider this children’s dialogue that was observed on 
01/31/20. Three girls are playing in dramatic play area:

Child 1: Pretends to be a hen from the Little Red 
Hen story and ask her two playmates:

      Who wants to sweep the floor?
Child 2: (standing on her knees, pretending to be a 

cat) Not I!
Child 3: (sitting and presenting to be a mouse)  

Not I! 
Child 1: Who wants to help me to eat breakfast?
Child 2 & Child 3: I do, I do! 
Child 1: Promise me you help me, and I will share 

the breakfast with you.
Child 2 & Child 3: Nod their heads.

The presented Little Red Hen story plot was used 
here by these three children to organize their play, 
communicate, socialize and learn. Stories enhance the 
child’s inner world and result in imaginative play. Thus, 
the provided stories have a power to stimulate and fos-
ter dramatic play in early childhood classrooms.

Corona and children. This theme emerged in most 
of the children’s stories, drawings and dialogues in the 
forms of a germ, princesses, and giants. Analysis of 10 
children’s drawings collected resulted in one about a 
germ, four on princesses, and five on giants. The draw-
ing featuring the word “germ” was of a child keeping 
the germ from entering the child’s house (see Figure 4). 
Of interest, was the fact that the child felt confident in 
preventing the germ from entering the home; thereby, 
able to protect the family. Additional analysis would 
have been beneficial to explore how the child planned 
to keep the germ from entering the home. Would it have 
been health measures emphasized in the classroom, 
school, and community such as washing hands, staying 
at least six feet apart, etc.? Or would the child have cre-
ated an imaginary world in which superpowers would 
have served as a protective force?

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                   Figure 4. Child’s drawing - germ

Four of the drawings collected featured princess-
es. All princesses were smiling in the drawings. Ideas 
emerged such as a princess being saved by a knight, the 
princess getting to see her family (see Figure 5), the 
princess and her friends, and the princess enjoying the 
sun. Of interest to our study, was the drawing of a prin-
cess getting to see her family. Additional analysis would 
have been beneficial to determine why the princess was 
unable to see her family. Was the princess in quarantine 
which would have mimicked reality or was the princess, 
as often pictured in fairytales, captured and waiting to 
be rescued?

Figure 5. Child’s drawing – princess

A giant was the most featured object in the chil-
dren’s drawings. Consistently, the giant was angry or 
mad as evidenced by the children’s wording of “The 
giant is mad! Something is in his way!”; “The giant is 
mad! He didn’t like the people!”; “The giant stomped all 
over the world!”; “The giant is walking to the city.”; “The 
giant is being watched by the birds!”. The last quotation 
was the only giant pictured as smiling. All other giants 
had straight lines for a V shaped mouth, a horizontal 
line (see Figure 6), or a sad face. A likely correlation to 
the Corona Giant story was that the birds were helpful 
to the giant; therefore, the giant was pictured as smil-
ing.

               Figure 6. Child’s drawing - giant

This topic is also captured in one of the dialogues be-
tween the researcher and the children:

Researcher: So, what happened when Corona 
Giant came to your city? What did you do?

Children: Wear a mask! 
Researcher: Mask. Oh, yes. That’s how we 

changed. 
Children: And be safe.
Teacher: And where can’t you go now?
Child: I can’t go to Chuck E. Cheese now until 

Corona’s gone.

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Child: I can’t go to McDonald’s playground.
Child: I wanted to go to the movie and they said 

no, it’s closed.
Researcher: Yes, so the Corona Giant is making 

us do and not to do so many things. This is 
what I would like you to do children. Since I 
cannot see you guys, I mean I cannot come to 
your school. Can you draw your story for me?

Child: Yes! 
Child: I already made a book. I can make another 

book about Corona the Giant.

Discussion
The limited amount of collected data due to 

COVID-19 pandemic suggests that a storytelling ap-
proach to teaching and learning can positively affect 
young children’s learning and development by making 
them story makers, story tellers, and story actors. To 
become a story maker, one needs to listen to absorb the 
language and ideas of others.

A well-crafted and intentionally chosen narrative 
helps children to make sense of the world, imagine and 
“give birth” to their own stories to express, communi-
cate and ‘dialogue’ (Bakhtin, 1984). As it was observed 
in data, for a child as young as three or four, a simple 
dot on a paper or drawing is a story. When there is a 
story, there is a point to communicate, idea to express, 
and reason to participate in the “carnival” (Bakhtin, 
1984) of the social world. Creative storytelling strate-
gies promote active engagement in the learning process 
which can become transformative in nature. This way, 
telling stories promotes children’s language skills that 
stimulates overall development (Nicolopoulou, 2019; 
Ripstein, 2018). Practicing and mastering listening and 
oral language skills establishes profound foundation 
for children to become confident readers and writers 
at later stages (Hibbin, 2016b). It was also found that 
young children who heard the stories told demonstrat-
ed improved story comprehension in their retelling, 
while children in the story reading group improved 
their language complexity (Isbell, Sobol, Lindauer, & 
Lawrence, 2004).

Moreover, the creative storytelling intervention 
provokes young children to engage in dramatic play by 
imitating the observed practice. Normally, preschool 
children participate in physical play, object play, pre-
tend (or socio-dramatic) play, and guided play. Togeth-
er, they comprise four broad categories, each of which 
is based on the developmental purpose it serves and 
the relationship of each type to children’s learning. 

This is important for today’s world where not all chil-
dren know how to play (Bodrova, 2001, Karpov, 2005) 
and their play does not elevate to level when it results 
in learning (Gudareva, 2005). Only mature, sophis-
ticated level of play triggers cognition and promotes 
self-regulation (Bodrova & Leong, 2008; Bodrova & 
Leong, 2003).

Storytelling is different than reading and it requires 
more active work of the brain. When the brain is active, 
concentration and attention are at work which contrib-
utes to information retention and comprehension (Ten, 
Van der Putten, Penne, Maes, Vlaskamp, 2016; Miyu-
ki, Sachie, Satoshi, Masato, Kazuto, Hirooki & Sinichi, 
2018). Children need to use their imaginative powers to 
illustrate the story scenes in their mind to project it on 
paper or play later. However, the child’s response/cre-
ation does not directly mirror the adults ‘story but rath-
er intertwined with his own inner worries, concerns, 
thinking and understating of the world. This became 
visible in children’s illustrations of Corona Giant narra-
tive as they work was ‘painted’ by their fears of germs, 
separation of families, concerns about safety and 
overall underling anxiety about the pandemic situation. 
Telling and expressing their inner needs and emotions 
has a power to foster positive identity, empathic under-
standing of self and others and bi-directional communi-
cation (Hibbin, 2016a).

Therefore, it can be concluded that storytelling in-
vites children to become story makers, story tellers and 
story actors to think creatively and engage in dialogue 
with others and the world. The intentional organi-
zation of storytelling activity can be used as a tool to 
promote language, literacy, vocabulary, socio-emotional 
development, self-expression, identification with story 
characters, empathic understanding of self and others, 
culture and identity. It stimulates intrinsic motivation 
for play. The concrete prompts and story table setting 
provide some direction inexplicitly inviting the children 
to play. The classroom with storytelling and play can 
serve as a feasible alternative to the skills-dominant 
and teacher-neutral early literacy curricula increasingly 
prevalent in pre-kindergarten classrooms around the 
country.

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by 
a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be 
understood as ‘non-instrumental’ practice in speaking 
and listening that emphasizes oral language over the 
reading and writing of stories. Hibbin (2016a) suggests 
that psychosocial development of young people in 
school can be encouraged and actively pursued with

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Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

opportunities afforded by oral storytelling for self-ex-
pression, identification with story characters, empathic 
understanding of self and others and bi-directional 
communication.

In a busy curriculum-focused environment, the 
strategy of storytelling allows space and time to stop 
and listen to students in meaningful and purposeful 
way, while facilitating their learning (Bromley, 2019; 
Cooper, Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007). Free-rang-
ing, teacher-scaffolded activities storytelling activi-
ties and curriculum in the early childhood classroom 
validate who the children are, what they know, and 
what they care about. Thus, “the need for early child-
hood teachers to retain their historical focus on oral 
language-based curricula that are directed at fair and 
equitable goals for young children—like the storytelling 
curriculum—has never been greater” (Cooper, Capo, 
Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007, p. 273).

Conclusion
Storytelling is deeply rooted in the belief that 

children learn through stories verbally shared across 
generations. It is about innovation, wonder, potentiali-
ty, freedom, and creativity that arise through plurality 
of voices, ideas and perspectives. Having such space 
in a classroom challenges, expands, and transcends 
traditional routine of teaching and learning practices. 
However, in today’s classrooms, the act of storytelling is 
often overshadowed by a narrow focus on academics in 
classrooms. Therefore, it is important to create a space 
for helping children to express themselves and their 
lived experiences in a creative way. Children can use 
storytelling as a way to demonstrate the depth of their 
understanding as well as express emotions such as fear, 
worry, etc. In closure, the following poem was shared 
with the researchers by an older child.

Quarantine nothing to do.
Quarantine is it something for you?

Quarantine nothing to do.
Quarantine is a boring thing for me and you.

Watch out for germs, they are as hairy as worms.
Take some turns and you will find those germs!

Children have stories to share with us and it is 
our responsibility as educators to listen. Whether it is 
through stories, drawings, or poetry children are cre-
atively expressing themselves. This manuscript details 
the use of a creative storytelling strategy implemented 
in an early childhood classroom in two distinct phases 
due to the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 
result documents a beautiful display of children’s cre-
ative storytelling ability and its connectedness to real 
world events. Work such as this lays the path for trans-
formation in education. It demonstrates the importance 
of providing young children with the opportunity for an 
education better suited for global interconnectedness 
(Global Institute for Transformative Education, 2021).

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Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to 

the school, teachers, children, and families who par-
ticipated in this study. We would also like to thank the 
contributions of Norah Baehl who assisted with this 
research.

Ilfa Zhulamanova (izhulamano@usi.edu) is an Assistant 
Professor in the Department at Teacher Education, Early 
Childhood, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, 
Indiana, USA.  ORCID ID #0000-0002-3167-3289

Authors

Jill M. Raisor (jmraisor@usi.edu) is an Associate 
Professor in the Department at Teacher Education, Early 
Childhood, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, 
Indiana, USA. ORCID ID #0000-0003-3333-4237

Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy

https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2018/iss39/10
https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2018/iss39/10
https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2018/iss39/10
https://ncte.org/statement/teachingstorytelling/
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3167-3289
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3333-4237


Abstract

This paper covers literature on translanguaging, translating, and interpreting in education, primarily K-12 
institutions. Translanguaging is defined by Dr. Josh Prada and its strengths are demonstrated in different 
contexts, including its use in the English as a New Language classroom. This study is elucidates the value of 
translanguaging in the classroom since it offers opportunities for scaffolding and building confidence in English 
while encouraging English language learners (ELLs) to actively participate in the learning process and to feel 
more comfortable around peers and staff. Multilingualism is reviewed in the context of language choice in 
different social contexts to better understand the usefulness of translanguaging. Spanish and English literacy 
and their impact on native Spanish-speaking children is also explored in this paper which allows understanding 
of personal experience from ELLs.  English-only policies are discussed and cautioned against due to the 
environment that is created by monolingualism. The importance of interpreters in schools is stressed because 
it has been determined to provide better educational outcomes for English Language Learners. The importance 
of translated written documents was covered in this study to better understand family involvement in 
education. Findings from this research include opportunities provided by translanguaging, the necessity of 
overcoming internalized biases, the harm of English-only policies, the importance of interpreters in schools, 
and the importance of translated documents/communications to strengthen family involvement.

Keywords: Translation, Interpretation, Translanguaging, Bilingualism, Monolingualism

Gentry, C. Global Journal of  
Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.32233

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Gentry, C. 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

Literary Review of Translanguaging, Translating, and  
Interpreting in Education 

Corinne Gentry

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

Introduction
In this paper, I will review literature on translan-

guaging, interpreting, and translating in an educa-
tional context. I chose this topic because of my career 
in a large midwestern urban school district. I am the 
school’s parent liaison, and it is my goal to involve the 
parents and families of students in their education and 
in the school community. 

I am the only staff member in the school who 
speaks Spanish. The secretary calls me to the front of-
fice several times a day when a Spanish speaker is pres-
ent or on the phone. Normally, it is a simple question 
or message, such as the student is ill and will not be in 
class that day. My coworkers are unable to communi-
cate with Spanish speakers, and sometimes I think they 
do not want to learn how. However, their unwillingness 

to learn is likely rooted in a lack of time and energy to 
dedicate to language learning.

How do these families feel at school? They can only 
communicate in their home language with one person 
in the entire building. When a teacher needs to commu-
nicate with a Spanish-speaking parent, they ask me to 
translate a document or letter, or they ask me to call a 
parent. One could argue that the language barrier re-
duces communication with these families, whether the 
communication is negative or positive. 

In my research, I am going to explore the state of 
translanguaging and interpreting in schools. Translan-
guaging is defined as “using the two languages strategi-
cally to maximize communication to express a message” 
(Prada, 2019). While communication with families 
is very important in education, communication with 
students is important as well. I will explore methods of 
translanguaging in the classroom and in communi-



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 16

nication with families. The majority of examples are 
based on native Spanish speakers who are learning 
English as a new language.

It is clear that transformative changes are necessary 
in the school system for English Language Learners 
(ELL). Some teachers use English-only policies that 
are destructive to the child’s self-worth. These policies 
make the child feel unvalued and less-than, which is 
detrimental to the teacher-student relationship and 
will result in poor educational outcomes. Educators 
must welcome and celebrate different languages and 
cultures rather than pushing them aside.  While some 
English as a New Language teachers use English-only 
policies because they themselves only speak English, 
these policies are incredibly alienating. We must allow 
our students to learn by translanguaging and providing 
scaffolding to build their confidence in English, which 
will result in the student feeling welcomed and valued. 

Transformative teaching methods for English 
Language Learners include multilingual books, using 
the native language in writing, visual displays, notes in 
the native language, and bilingual dictionaries. These 
practices break away from the status quo of enforcing 
English-only policies. These practices will result in 
better educational outcomes, providing more equity 
between native English speakers and native speakers 
of other languages. The practices are easily applied to 
real-life educational settings.

Native Spanish Speakers and Translanguaging
Translanguaging means using the two languages 

strategically to maximize communication to express a 
message, meaning the two languages are an integrated 
system instead of two separate languages, as defined 
by Dr. Josh Prada in his article “Exploring the role of 
Translanguaging in Linguistic Ideological and Attitudi-
nal Reconfigurations in the Spanish Classroom for Her-
itage Speakers.” Another definition of translanguaging 
is “the multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals 
engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds” 
(Garcia, 2009). The first language can be utilized to its 
full potential to adopt a fluid instead of a fixed notion of 
language (Kabir, 2019). The speaker uses characteris-
tics of the two languages for the highest communication 
potential. This is also where we experience loan words 
between languages, such as siesta and paella.

English learners use translanguaging as a bridge 
between English and their native language. Translan-
guaging builds confidence when the speaker can use 
simple words and phrases in the new language; the 

speaker can build the foundation of the new language 
when using the native language if they do not know the 
phrases or words in the new language (Prada, 2018). 
The practices of translanguaging in pedagogy will be 
discussed in this paper later on.

People also use translanguaging when a concept ex-
ists in one language and does not exist in the other. For 
example, there is an American woman who has visited 
Spain and wanted to explain characteristics of Spanish 
culture. She would not say that “My classmate is having 
a big party for her 15th birthday”, she would say “My 
classmate is having a quinceanera.”  On the contrary, 
people use translanguaging to explain concepts in En-
glish as well. A girl in high school wouldn’t say that “The 
boy asked me to the big dance for the 12th graders”; 
she would say ¨A boy asked me to the prom¨. 

It is important to consider many perspectives when 
a native Spanish speaker is translanguaging. One must 
consider the population of Spanish speakers in the 
community. Does the speaker live in Miami, which has a 
majority Hispanic population, or in a small, white town 
in Ohio? Also, it is important to consider the context 
(casual or formal) and life experiences, such as level of 
education or socioeconomic status, as the social context 
and socioeconomic status may change the vernacular 
used in the exchange. Native speakers use translan-
guaging to give more meaning to interactions with 
language flexibility. Translanguaging allows the speaker 
to offer, obtain, process, and understand information. 

The definition of translanguaging introduces the 
concepts of heteroglossia and diglossia “Heteroglos-
sia means using the two languages in a flexible way; 
the barriers of which words and phrases are from one 
language, and which are from the other language do 
not exist” (Prada, 2018). Heteroglossia also transcends 
barriers of geography. The use of each language has no 
restrictions because the two languages are so integrat-
ed. 

 Diglossia means that the two languages are sepa-
rate and are not used together (Prada, 2018). They are 
separate in the mind, and they are not integrated. Sadly, 
the idea of diglossia introduces a hierarchy of language. 
In the United States, many people believe that English is 
the superior language and Spanish is inferior. This be-
lief stems from racism, white supremacy, and xenopho-
bia. Some people think that native Spanish - the method 
that people speak casually, such as with family - is infe-
rior because it is not in line with the standard. But, it is 
important to remember that this idea originates from 
raciolingusitics - people want them to “sound white”

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 17

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

when they speak English. While Spanish as the heri-
tage language works perfectly in most situations, it is 
difficult for its speakers to enter the academic spheres. 
People who translanguage can learn to speak and write 
more “academically” to enter these academic spheres; 
in this case, translanguaging is a skill. 

Translanguaging has a great influence on the lan-
guage classroom. When the language is separate and 
an abstract entity, translanguaging cannot happen. The 
second language needs to be integrated into the class-
room. For the sake of simplicity, I will discuss translan-
guaging in pedagogy in the context of native Spanish 
speakers learning English. The first point to consider 
is that the teacher needs to differentiate instruction 
for small groups or individual students; the “one size 
fits all” strategy is not effective in the English language 
classroom. It is important to ensure that students have 
prior knowledge and context to do class work. For 
example, a teacher at a higher-income magnet school 
could assign students to do research and write about 
college and career prospects that interest them. A staff 
member or classmate could explain that students at 
this particular school are expected to go to college, 
so they should research a career path that requires a 
college degree. Many authors encourage the idea of 
flexible language use in the classroom to ensure that 
students feel comfortable in class and with their peers. 
The use of flexible language can allow students to 
connect with the material in a more personal way. Also, 
translanguaging can strengthen relationships between 
classmates because they have the native language in 
common, and with language comes life experiences and 
culture. It is recommended to pair students who know 
more English with students who speak less English, and 
this practice is common in many academic contexts and 
subjects. One other point to consider is if local language 
factors, such as accents and vocabulary, should be used 
in the classroom. Some argue that local vernaculars are 
not up to standard; however, many academics argue 
against the idea of a language standard as it creates an 
unfair deficit framework (Harris & Schroeder, 2013). 
Awareness of regional accents and vocabulary increases 
language fluency.

In conclusion, it is important to have a definition of 
translanguaging and how to give context to this phe-
nomenon. The author gives information on translan-
guaging in the context of pedagogy in the language 
classroom. We are reminded that raciolinguistics are 
present and create a hierarchy between the two lan-
guages, and it is important to view this phenomenon

without judgment and internalized racism (Prada, 
2018). Translanguaging is a great method to build a 
bridge between the native language and the second 
language. 

Multilingual Translanguaging in  
Different Social Contexts

Speakers use translanguaging differently in each so-
cial context. My research on this phenomenon is based 
on a study of a trilingual couple from China, as outlined 
in Translanguaging and translation: The construction 
of social difference across city spaces.  (Blackledge, Cre-
ese, and Hu, 2018). The husband is from China and the 
wife is from Malaysia, and they usually speak Mandarin. 
They speak Cantonese and English as well. The couple 
met when working together at a restaurant, and now 
they have three children. The couple owns a meat busi-
ness in Birmingham, which is a “superdiverse” city. The 
couple uses translanguaging and translation in differ-
ent areas in the city. This is a strategic use of the three 
languages that depends on the context and the partic-
ipants in the interaction (Blackledge, Creese, and Hu). 
The authors analyze three recordings - a conversation 
at their business, a social conversation, and a conversa-
tion at home between husband and wife. 

In this study, we see that interpreters are “social 
agents” who reflect and transfer information (Black-
ledge, Creese, and Hu, 2018). This couple can find com-
mon ground with whom they would have not otherwise 
communicated. More people can connect with translan-
guaging because they can use their entire repertoire 
of communication (Blackledge, Creese, and Hu, 2018). 
Speakers of different walks of life, ethnicities, gen-
ders, and more can connect when they translanguage. 
Translanguaging fills in the gaps in each language to 
communicate the entire message - all three languages 
are integrated into one large language repertoire for 
successful interaction (Blackledge, Creese, and Hu, 
2018).

The methodology of this study consists of record-
ings at work (the meat stand), among friends, and at 
home. The authors explain the wife’s parents were 
visiting from Malaysia, and the couple spoke Canton-
ese with the parents. When the couple was at work, 
they usually spoke Mandarin, and they usually spoke 
Cantonese, Mandarin, or English to communicate with 
customers (Blackledge, Creese, & Hu, 2018).

The first recording was at the meat stand in town 
square. The husband and another cashier were at the 
booth, and the recording is an interaction between the



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 18

husband, the other cashier, and the customer. In the 
context of the stall or a store, people cross social lines 
to make the transaction. The two men made a judgment 
to decide which language to use, or would test all three 
languages to see which language succeeds in conversa-
tion. The customer asked the husband to translate the 
question to the other cashier, but the cashier under-
stood the dialect of Chinese that the customer spoke. In 
the recording, the husband was more concerned about 
expressing the main idea of the message rather than the 
details (Blackledge, Creese, and Hu).

In the next recording, we listen to a conversation 
between the husband, the wife, and the other cashier. 
The conversation is about a birthday celebration for a 
friend. The other cashier expresses that while he wants 
to go to the party, he does not want to spend money 
on beers and a taxi. The group discusses the cultural 
differences between England and China with respect to 
the etiquette of celebrations. In this conversation, the 
other teller speaks in English. The wife speaks to the 
husband in Mandarin a few times to confirm that she 
understands English, which shows that she thinks the 
husband understands more English than she does. The 
husband uses colloquial phrases, and the couple uses 
English and Mandarin as an integrated system (Black-
ledge, Creese, and Hu, 2018).

The final recording takes place in the home. During 
the study, the wife’s parents were visiting, and the cou-
ple spoke in Cantonese with the parents. The parents 
do not participate in this conversation, but are present 
during the interaction. The couple discuss the business 
and that they think some workers are lazy. The couple 
uses offensive words about white workers. While the 
words are racist, the couple does not feel bad about 
using these words because there are no white people in 
the vicinity. The couple speaks informally and they use 
sarcasm. There are no social lines in the house because 
the husband and wife are of the same social class as 
the in-laws, and they do not need to cross these lines 
(Blackledge, Creese, and Hu, 2018). 

It is also important to consider how young people 
use translanguaging, as seen in “Translanguaging as a 
Boundary-Crossing Mechanism: A Turkish-American 
Youngster and her Linguistic Negotiation of Three 
Discursive Spaces” (de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). This study 
reviews a young girl around age six and her experiences 
in translanguaging at home, her Turkish-language her-
itage school, and her mainstream school. The authors 
state that her family valued the girl’s multilingualism 
and wanted to preserve her knowledge of the Turkish

language, so they spoke Turkish at home and sent her 
to a Turkish heritage school on Sunday afternoons. The 
child was born in Hong Kong and had Hong Kong citi-
zenship, so they also valued her knowledge of Canton-
ese. Her mainstream school was fairly diverse, but the 
teacher had little knowledge of the Turkish language 
and culture, based on a teacher interview. The teachers 
at the heritage school spoke both English and Turkish 
(de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). 

One of the findings the authors found was the 
difference in language use by the adults in her life. 
Her parents only used Turkish at home, aside from 
using English to help the girl with homework (de Jong 
& Yilmaz, 2020). Her teacher at school used English 
most of the time, aside from occasional Spanish with 
some Spanish-speaking students (de Jong & Yilmaz, 
2020). The teachers at the heritage school spoke both 
English and Turkish in order to facilitate understanding 
between students of varying language proficiencies 
(de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). Based on these findings, we 
can conclude that her teachers at the Turkish heritage 
school were using translanguaging to allow for a broad-
er repertoire of communication. 

Another finding from the study was the difference 
in language use by her peers in these three different 
places- home, the heritage school, and her mainstream 
school. Her peers at home were the children of family 
friends who also spoke Turkish, so these interactions 
were almost entirely in Turkish (de Jong & Yilmaz, 
2020). Her peers at her mainstream school spoke 
almost entirely English, aside from occasional Span-
ish conversations with Spanish-speaking peers. In an 
interview, the girl noted two experiences of speaking 
Turkish at school- once when she met another Turk-
ish-speaking student, and once when she was teaching 
a peer a few words in Turkish (de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). 
Her peers used translanguaging frequently at the 
heritage school in order to accurately convey messages 
between students of varying language proficiencies 
(de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). The teachers at the heri-
tage school supported translanguaging so they could 
embrace both parts of their identity and widen their 
community (de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020).

Another finding to consider is the boundaries be-
tween these three locations. The girl could easily tran-
sition between home and the heritage school because 
Turkish could be spoken at both places, but the transi-
tion from home to her mainstream school was incred-
ibly difficult (de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). The transition 
from the heritage school to the mainstream school was

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 19

not as difficult because English was spoken in both 
places, but the girl was able to translanguage at the 
heritage school, which was not an option at her main-
stream school (de Jong & Yilmaz, 2020). 

In conclusion, the couple uses translanguaging as 
a very important resource in the business and with 
the family (Blackledge, Creese, & Hu, 2018) and in the 
young Turkish girl’s experience in navigating home, her 
mainstream school, and her heritage school (de Jong 
& Yilmaz, 2020). The husband and the other cashier 
use translanguaging with customers at the meat stand, 
and they use translanguaging in social situations as 
well. They decide which language to use strategically 
depending on the context, and they can mix the three 
languages to get the message across, along with using 
the same strategy with the wife’s parents (Blackledge, 
Creese, and Hu, 2018). The young Turkish girl decides 
which language to use with different people in her life 
(parents vs. teachers, peers at the heritage school vs. 
peers at her mainstream school, etc.). This study shows 
that people communicate more effectively when they 
use their entire repertoire to communicate with differ-
ent people in different situations strategically.

Latinx Childrens’ Use of Translanguaging
Many Latinx students have an internal conflict be-

tween English and Spanish, and have compartmental-
ized English for use during the school day and Spanish 
for use at home (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 2018). 
The authors of Latinx Children’s Push and Pull of Span-
ish Literacy and Translanguaging explain that schools 
have “English-only” policies because state tests are only 
in English, and funding for schools depends on state 
test scores. The pedagogy only focuses on phonics and 
grammar, which does not allow analysis, synthesis, and 
higher order thinking (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 
2018).

Unfortunately, these children often do not learn 
to read and write in Spanish, and sometimes they 
lose their Spanish. When students lose their Spanish, 
they lose a rich culture and family connections. Sadly, 
schools see Spanish as a problem rather than a magnif-
icent resource. Many schools force Latinx students to 
take very basic classes (possibly because students do 
not earn high scores on state tests, because the test is in 
English), and students are not prepared for higher edu-
cation (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 2018). Another 
hypothesis is that schools see Spanish as a language 
of the lower social class, and they think that Spanish 
speakers are not intelligent, so they have a deficit.

Many of these students do not feel comfortable in class 
and rarely participate (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 
2018). 

We can investigate Latinx childrens’ use of translan-
guaging by reading a study that takes place in a pri-
vate tutoring program during May and June 2017, as 
outlined in Latinx Children’s Push and Pull of Spanish 
Literacy and Translanguaging (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & 
Lewis, 2018). The students in this program were there 
because they were struggling in school,  particularly in 
reading and writing. Fifteen student teachers worked 
with 19 children for an hour and a half in the after-
noons, and then the college students had a literacy class 
in the evenings. College students would help children 
write in English, in Spanish, and in translanguaging. All 
of the students were in grades kindergarten through 
eight, and did not learn Spanish literacy in school. 

The data from the study was based on interviews 
with the children. The study authors would ask ques-
tions about experiences with the tutoring program 
and experiences with Spanish at school. The students 
liked the opportunity to write in Spanish because they 
never had the opportunity to write in Spanish at school 
(Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 2018). In the inter-
views, many children talked about state tests, and they 
were not permitted to answer the questions in Spanish 
(Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 2018). Some children 
said that writing in Spanish was too difficult and they 
could not do it, because they had not had formal in-
struction to write in Spanish (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & 
Lewis, 2018).

Some children were confused by translanguag-
ing because of  “bracketing”- the separation between 
English and Spanish (Bussert-Webb, Masso, & Lewis, 
2018). The children understood that Spanish was at 
home, and English was at school. However, the students 
did not realize that they had been translanguaging for 
a lifetime with their families and in the community. For 
example, many of the children had been translating 
for their parents for many years. One student felt that 
translanguaging was like “Spanglish” with a pouting 
face - my thought is that she has an internalized dislike 
of Spanish, which is based on racism and the hierarchy 
between English and Spanish. However, the faculty at 
the tutoring center worked very hard to create positive 
associations with Spanish and translanguaging. For 
example, the center had a Mother’s Day card making 
activity in May, and the messages within the cards were 
in Spanish. The children enjoyed this activity because 
their language and culture were respected and cele-

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 20

brated. College students switched between English and 
Spanish to show that the two languages are important. 
The center acted as a “third place” between home and 
school, a place to experience and learn. 

In conclusion, the study shows that bilingual chil-
dren have internalized racism because schools only 
value English,  Schools only value English because state 
tests are often only in English, and school funding is 
based on state test scores. If there were not any govern-
ment pressure and testing, schools could teach Spanish 
literacy to support English literacy. Perhaps states like 
Texas and California need to consider different policies 
to preserve Spanish instead of its erasure. 

Translanguaging in Practice and  
Its Shifts in Ideologies

Unfortunately, there are some educators who do 
not allow native language in the classroom. We learn 
more about the benefits of linguistic diversity in the 
classroom from a study on eight schools that choose to 
introduce the project “City University New York State 
Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals” [CUNYSIEB] (Menken 
& Sanchez, 2019). The CUNYSIEB faculty introduced 
the concept of translanguaging to the faculty of the 
eight schools during professional development meet-
ings, and asked them to allow students to use the entire 
linguistic repertoire in class flexibly and strategically 
within translanguaging pedagogy. This request caused 
a change of mind and changed monolingual practices in 
schools (Menken & Sanchez, 2019).

To give context, some teachers spoke Spanish, but 
some native languages of the students were not spoken 
by the teachers. The teachers slowly introduced new 
practices of translanguaging pedagogy. For example, a 
practice of translanguaging in the classroom is to put 
students in pairs and small groups. Translanguaging 
offered opportunities for scaffolding in partner/small 
group conversations. The multilingual practices in-
cluded multilingual books, using the native language in 
writing, visual displays, notes in the native language, 
and bilingual dictionaries. 

The schools had many changes of ideology about 
the language. Teachers no longer acted like the “En-
glish police,” which developed a schoolwide belief in 
translanguaging.  The schools no longer see the native 
language as a deficit, but as an advantage (Menken & 
Sanchez, 2019). Translanguaging is a very useful re-
source even when the teacher does not speak the native 
language of the student. 

The study shows that it is important to see the

bilingual student holistically. In the past, educators 
in the school district did not consider the native lan-
guage’s grammar and sentence structure (Menken & 
Sanchez, 2019). With translanguaging, teachers can 
view the  language, culture, and history of students 
more favorably and with context. According to the 
study, translanguaging eliminates language hierarchies, 
because languages are woven together and are not 
separated. The students participated more in class and 
felt like a part of the school community. The students 
understood the class topics more thoroughly and had 
more control over their learning. 

As a result of this project (CUNYSIEB), the dis-
tricts enacted new education policies. Five of the 
eight schools created bilingual programs, and three 
schools created transitional bilingual programs. Some 
schools created classes that are entirely in Spanish. The 
study authors pointed out that developing the native 
language supports the development of English. One 
problem with bilingual education is that it is difficult to 
staff bilingual teachers. Another problem with bilingual 
education is that it can separate the two languages, but 
the study schools are using translanguaging to prevent 
the separation (Menken & Sanchez, 2019). 

In my research, I found it important to include 
findings from “(Re)imagining the Future of Translan-
guaging in Pedagogies in TESOL Through Teacher-Re-
searcher Collaboration” from Shepard-Carey and Tian, 
2020. This article highlights teacher and researcher 
collaboration to mobilize and sustain translanguaging 
pedagogies in Teaching English to Speakers of Other 
Languages, or TESOL. The two researchers  paired up 
with a local English instructor to build a collaborative 
partnership to create effective translanguaging strate-
gies to ensure higher educational outcomes. 

Researcher Tian built a partnership with a former 
classmate who taught an intensive English course at a 
university (pseudonym Ms. Davidson). When outlining 
their goals, Ms. Davidson explained that translanguag-
ing had been a “hidden” practice in her classroom via 
online bilingual dictionaries and students resorting 
to their native language in small group discussions 
(Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). Ms. Davidson wanted to 
learn ways to leverage those multilingual resources in 
her teaching (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). Tian and 
Davidson created translanguaging activities in their 
classroom based on course goals and learner back-
grounds, “such as comparing and contrasting semantic 
and cultural use of language in context (e.g., idioms and 
language in mass media) and culturally relevant figures’

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 21

role play” (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). One challenge 
they faced was student resistance to use the native lan-
guage due to the hidden curriculum of immersion being 
the only way to learn a language, so Tian and Davidson 
held open discussions about native languages and their 
relation to English (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). Tian 
and Davidson found that translanguaging pedagogies 
significantly increased learner comprehension, metalin-
guistic awareness, and comfort level with using English 
(Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020).

Researcher Shepard-Carey worked with her former 
co-teacher, pseudonym Ms. Hassan. While Shepard-Car-
ey had a stronger background in pedagogy, Ms. Hassan 
identified as an immigrant and spoke Somali, the native 
language of many of her students; her background 
provided knowledge and experience that was beneficial 
to the classroom (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). They 
both had to confront some internalized biases; both 
teachers had been taught to use English-only policies in 
the classroom, but their collaboration allowed for more 
opportunities for students to use translanguaging in the 
classroom (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). For example, 
the co-teachers used a multilingual morning meeting 
routine that lasted all year (Shepard-Carey & Tian, 
2020). Since the students were translanguaging, they 
were able to create deeper connections between their 
native language and English for better understanding 
(Shepard-Carey & Tian, 2020). 

In conclusion, the CUNYSIEB project created a more 
positive view of bilingual students and their cultures 
and histories. This project led to more researchers and 
educators to use translanguaging in the classroom, as 
seen in Shepard-Carey and Tian’s work. The project 
went beyond pedagogy practices and created a change 
in ideology. It is important to remember that teachers 
need to believe in translanguaging to teach with these 
practices, and it is a reminder that English is no better 
than any other language (Menken & Sanchez, 2019). 
Some students may meet translanguaging with resis-
tance, but with open communication and encourage-
ment, students can benefit greatly from translanguag-
ing. Small changes can create a change in ideology, and 
it can make a big change in the school and community.

The Importance of Interpreters in Schools
We must also consider the importance of interpret-

ers in schools for families who speak languages other 
than English.  “Bridging the Latino Achievement Gap: 
The Importance of Interpreters In Schools” by Rachel R. 
Williams of University of Kentucky offers perspective 

based on real experiences in public schools. The author 
begins with the notion that schools generally fail to 
understand and accommodate languages and cultures 
other than English and American. Sometimes there are 
conflicts between students and adults in school due to 
a lack of understanding of their culture and language 
(Willams, 2016). But, there is a large communication 
barrier between the families that only speak Spanish 
and the schools that only communicate in English (Wil-
liams, 2016). Studies show that there is a correlation 
between family involvement in education and student 
success. 

What are the advantages of family participation in 
education? According to the author, students are much 
more successful when their families are involved in 
the school versus not being involved in the school. The 
first advantage is that students are more engaged in the 
classroom. The second advantage is that students are 
more motivated. The third advantage is that students 
have higher levels of control and competence, and more 
effective self-control and goal orientation. All of these 
advantages lead to higher outcomes of student success 
(Williams, 2016). 

Why are these students more successful? The 
author writes that students feel more comfortable in 
school. These students are often “high-achieving” due 
to intellect or “high-achieving” because they have help 
and support in education. These students often take ad-
vanced classes and feel happy and confident (Williams, 
2016).

Parents who are Spanish speakers have many dis-
advantages in education, primarily in regards to com-
munication. It is difficult for these parents to help with 
homework because they do not understand directions 
and content. It is important to consider that some par-
ents have not had much education, and many did not 
graduate from high school. The largest barrier is that 
parents cannot communicate with school personnel. 
Children are often “language brokers”, or interpreters 
for their parents (Rossato, 2010).  These situations 
when the child needs to interpret give children a lot 
of stress; also, there is a limit to the complexity and 
potential of the communication because the child does 
not understand the subject, or the vocabulary is too ad-
vanced (Rossato, 2010). When children are interpreting 
for parents, it is not possible to determine the accuracy 
of communication, which could lead to misunderstand-
ings.

Williams (2016) coordinated a study on parent and 
family involvement in education. A bilingual and Latino

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 22

interviewer asked the children about their attitude 
about education, such as “How do you feel about math?” 
and “What subjects do you like?” The interviewer asked 
parents about their experiences and attitudes about 
school. 58% of parents said they were confident in their 
ability to communicate with their child’s teacher, and 
42% said they were not confident in communicating 
with their child’s teacher. 78% of the 42% said they had 
access to an interpreter, and 22% did not have access to 
an interpreter. 

Another aspect of this study was about conversa-
tions between school staff and parents. The researcher 
concluded that it is very necessary to have an interpret-
er during these conversations to maximize communica-
tion. The presence of an interpreter increases the pace 
of communication, the level of communication, and the 
levels of trust between the two parties. It is imperative 
that the interpreter and staff work together to maxi-
mize communication with parents. 

Communication flow between parents and school 
staff has a positive correlation with monitoring student 
achievement, such as looking at grades in PowerSchool 
(Williams, 2016). Parents with adequate communica-
tion can help with homework and support students 
when they need it. There is more frequent contact be-
tween parents and the school, and these conversations 
are of a higher caliber. However, communication is not 
a factor in how much the family values education. All 
families want their students to be successful academi-
cally, but sometimes they are unsure of how to help. It 
is very difficult to help with homework and communi-
cate with the school when they do not speak the same 
language and there is no interpreter. 

It is unlikely that a child can understand complicat-
ed documents like these, especially in their second lan-
guage. Documents need to be in Spanish, or the office 
needs to provide an interpreter. It is not the child’s re-
sponsibility to translate documents or for other adults. 
The content of such documents is often too complicat-
ed for the child to understand. Sometimes the subject 
matter is not appropriate, such as details of a divorce or 
medical forms regarding reproductive health.

In conclusion, all families want to support their 
children, and they want children to be successful in 
their education. But, it is very difficult to help the child 
with homework when the parent does not speak the 
same language. It is important that interpreters work 
together with school staff to ensure that parents who 
are Spanish speakers have the same quality of service 
and communication as parents who are English

speakers. Families and schools are a team, and the goal 
is the child’s success. 

Translations in School Communication
It is also imperative to discuss the responsibility 

of schools to communicate with all families. Stephanie 
Fordice, former communications coordinator for Cook 
County Schools in Illinois, offers strategies to ensure ef-
fective communications for all families. Fordice’s article 
“At the Corner of Diversity and Communication” gives 
many suggestions for schools and school districts. The 
first suggestion is to ensure that the translations are ac-
curate and readily available and it is also recommended 
to have an interpreter at all school events so all families 
can communicate and feel comfortable (Fordice, 2014).  
All schools and the district office need an interpreter 
in the building to answer questions in a timely man-
ner, and all documents and publications (newsletters, 
calendars, etc.) need a translation; of course, these 
translations need to go to the correct students. One 
simple strategy is to make bilingual copies with English 
on one side and the second language on the other side. 
The author compares the translations to differentiated 
instruction because all families need different supports. 
It is important to consider the format of the documents 
as well, as some languages read right to left instead of 
left to right (Fordice, 2014). 

 It is also important to ensure that these documents 
and publications are on paper and online, since some 
families do not have the technology or access to the 
Internet (Fordice, 2014). When furthering my research 
in school communication, I came across the article “The 
Roles of the Online Environment in School-Family Com-
munication ‘’ by Otilia Clipa, faculty member of Stefan 
cel Mare University of Suceava. In Clipa’s findings, we 
discover that 80% of parents feel that online communi-
cation would strengthen the relationship between the 
school and the family, along with 76% of teachers. If 
the school decides to have information on the website 
or social media, the platform needs to have a function 
that translates the content into other languages, and 
it is important that the translation is correct (Fordice, 
2014). Some schools and districts post videos, so they 
need captions available in the needed language (For-
dice, 2014). In personal experience, many schools use 
Blackboard Connect, a service that broadcasts phone 
messages, text messages, and emails to families. These 
communications are fairly easy to translate into the 
needed language.

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 23

Another important idea is to have a school liaison 
who is bilingual so the parents and families can com-
municate with at least one staff member at the school 
(Fordice, 2014). The liaison focuses on communication 
with families and community partners. The liaison 
considers all factors that prevent parent and family 
involvement, such as transportation and language 
barriers. The author’s research was based on a school 
in Chicago that has two family liaisons (one bilingual) 
because family involvement has a positive correlation 
with student success. It is also important that these 
liaisons and other school staff members are competent 
in internet and social media usage (Clipa, 2019).

Conclusion
Students learning English as a new language could 

have more success if school staff members change 
their ideologies and confront their internalized biases. 
Translanguaging allows students to access their entire 
repertoire of communication to fully communicate a 
message, along with allowing students to scaffold as 
they build confidence in English.  It is imperative to 
celebrate progress instead of showing disappointment 
when a child’s attempt in English is not quite correct; 
many children would shut down and feel very embar-
rassed in that instance. When teachers enforce “En-
glish-only” policies, this destroys the student-teacher 
relationship, which is detrimental to student success. 
Students need to know they are safe and valued at 
school for authentic learning to take place and have 
positive educational outcomes. Staff members could 
show a genuine interest in the child’s culture and learn 
more by speaking with the child and doing research. 

In order to improve communication with families, 
one of the simplest strategies is to print school docu-
ments in English on one side and Spanish on the other. 
That way, it is ensured that families who need the the 
document in Spanish will have it. Another strategy is to 
hire an interpreter whose sole duty is to communicate 
with families during meetings or other school events. 
The interpreter could also make phone calls and write 
correspondence in the needed language to improve 
communication and remove any barriers. 

It is imperative to value diversity instead of viewing 
it as a burden. As educators, we are doing ourselves a 
disservice when we do not value a child’s background 
and language. It is our job to ensure each child has 
what they need to be successful, and a child whose first 
language is not English should have the same opportu-
nities as a child who is a native English speaker. These 
barriers need to be removed to ensure equity in school 
and beyond. 

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Gentry, Translanguaging, Translating & Interpreting Page 24

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Author

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Abstract

This paper discusses the contours of developing a 21st century course syllabus that empowers students 
in the learning process to become critical thinkers, problem-solvers, innovators, and collaborators. The 
author draws from transformative learning theory to provide detailed information on the characteristics of 
a syllabus, its universal components, interpreting course code, uses of a syllabus, accessibility, and backward 
design. He also draws from Bloom’s taxonomy to offer a pragmatic guide to syllabus creation with concrete 
examples on how instructors can employ a backward design approach for syllabus development to effectively 
create a syllabus of a course they have never taught before. The author concludes by reiterating that the 
overarching emphasis of teaching with a syllabus is to promote higher-order thinking and deeper learning in 
higher education because a syllabus that promotes such practices and knowledge transfer maximizes learning 
outcomes.

Keywords: Syllabus, Learner-centered, Learning outcomes, 21st Century SKills, Higher education

Ndemanu, M. T. Global Journal of  
Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.33616

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Ndemanu, M. T., 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

Transformative Syllabus Design: Maximizing  
learning outcomes in higher education

Michael T. Ndemanu

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

Introduction
Wilhelm von Humboldt, a German philosopher, is 

the founder of today’s modern university system that 
transformed universities from training-oriented profes-
sional institutions couched in transmissive pedagogy 
to the present-day higher education institutions that 
are committed to the discovery of, pursuit of, search for, 
knowledge (Mueller, 1991). The goal of using a syllabus 
to teach college courses is to ensure that modern higher 
education institutions meet the goals for which they 
were founded. This paper is aimed at strengthening 
professional development skills of higher education 
instructors in syllabus development. 

It is a truism that higher education in any country 
is a citadel of knowledge production and consumption. 
While one would expect a fair balance between re-
search and teaching in a university, many organizations 
concerned with the quality of programs only tend to 
use research output as a yardstick of an institutional

value, thereby undermining teaching (OECD) which is 
one of the most crucial aspects of college education. 
This may explain why there is no teacher preparation 
program for university instructors as it is the case for 
K-12 teachers. Although professors are content ex-
perts in their various fields, most of them did not take 
formal coursework on pedagogy. Nonetheless, many 
would claim that they master college teaching and do 
not need professional development in pedagogy on 
grounds of their extended apprenticeship of obser-
vation (Lortie, 1975). Apprenticeship of observation 
is predicated on the notion that by the time a student 
has completed their K-12 education, they had amassed 
more than13000 hours of teaching observations as they 
observe their own teachers and professors teach them. 
Whether a professor has received formal preparation 
in college teaching or not, there is a general consensus 
that they should all know how to conceptualize and de-
velop a syllabus for each of the courses that they teach 
so as to improve the quality of college education. This 
essay offers a pragmatic guide to syllabus development



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 26

using transformative education theoret-ical framework. 
A syllabus can be defined as a course roadmap that 
that provides the various makeups of a course such 
that prospective and current students in the course are 
abreast with the course objectives and expectations. As 
Parkes et al. (2002) posit, a syllabus serves as a con-
tract between the instructor and the students given that 
it contains vital information regarding course descrip-
tion, course readings, assignments and their deadlines, 
attendance policy, roles and duties of students as well 
as the responsibilities of instructors. While research 
on syllabus is very limited, most of it has focused on its 
purpose and its required components. Calhoon et al. 
(2008) went outside the norm to study how students 
use syllabi. They contended that students access syllabi 
on a regular basis when the syllabi contain information 
about assignments, due dates, and rubrics. 

It is worth noting that syllabus embodies a lot of 
intricacies owing to educators’ varying philosophi-
cal orientations and dispositions. Paradoxically, such 
orientations are not as diametrically different among 
educators in developing countries owing to the fact 
that they all studied through a very traditional and 
transmission-oriented pedagogy. Thus, a plurality of 
educators still strongly believes in the banking concept 
(Freire, 2000) in which the instructor is the sole owner 
of knowledge and the reading material and only share 
them with students during lectures. Such an entrenched 
belief in the sole proprietorship of knowledge in a 
specific domain influences instructors’ choice of tone, 
content, delivery methods, expectations, objectives, 
instructional activities, and course policy during the 
syllabus design process. While it is unheard of in higher 
education in the United States that college professors 
could teach a course without a predesigned syllabus, it 
is still a ubiquitous practice in some countries around 
the world. Many students are still graduating from col-
lege without ever having had any exposure to the sylla-
bi of the courses they took. It was within this backdrop 
that the author of this essay decided to write an article 
on strategies of developing a learner-centered course 
syllabus so that it could benefit all the faculty mem-
bers who are interested in maximizing their students’ 
learning outcomes through active learning, but who do 
not know how to go about it. In the subsequent sections 
of this essay, a conceptual framework will be discussed, 
followed by characteristics of a syllabus, procedure of 
syllabus design, and conclusion.

Conceptual Framework
For this article, a transformative learning theory is 

used to discuss the merits of designing a learner-cen-
tered syllabus. Transformative learning theory, coined 
by Mezirow et al. (2000) in the 1970s, was initially used 
in the field of adult education before becoming main-
streamed in the education field as a whole. It is a rela-
tively new terminology that was first used to describe 
a new teaching and learning process that involves 
meaning making out of new information to ensure 
that knowledge is transferred and applied in real-life 
contexts beyond the classroom. It encompasses review-
ing, manipulating, and interpretating current and past 
experiences to make meaning. It also embodies critical 
thinking and critical literacy- Learning to question. 
Learning to deconstruct and reconstruct concepts, 
theories, ideologies, and worldviews. In other words, 
learning is preceded by disorienting dilemmas because 
a previous experience has been disrupted. Thus, trans-
formative education could engender psychological 
trauma since it problematizes a perennial practice that 
has been normalized over the years (Todd, 2003). Edu-
cation is supposed to lead to the transformation of the 
learner and consequently the society. Many teachers in 
developed countries already employ transformative ed-
ucation theory in designing and teaching their courses 
given that transformative education cultivates critical 
thinking skills in learners. It also places strong empha-
ses on creativity and problem-solving skills which are 
essential skills for the 21st century problems. 

The contemporary notion of transformative educa-
tion transcends the adult education field into broader 
view of education as an art of transforming learners 
and not just informing them. As Yacek (2019) argued, 
transformative education requires psychological re-
structuring for effective learning to take place because 
it requires an in-depth critical reflection about previ-
ously held beliefs to determine whether those previous-
ly held ideas should be upheld or discarded. It requires 
perspicacious determination of what to reject and what 
to substitute previous knowledge with. Thus, syllabi 
should be designed in such a way that educational goals 
will be formed around addressing the fundamental 
question of educating more for transformation and 
minimally for information (Rosebrough et al., 2011). 
Not all education acquired is considered transforma-
tive. For Yacek (2019), it is only transformative when an 
educational experience is identified as an extraordinary 
monumental change in a learner’s personal develop-
ment, shattering previous beliefs and worldviews while

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 27

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

ushering it fresher perspective on prior concepts. 
The word transformative ought not to be viewed as a 
buzzword given that almost every learner at all ages 
experiences some sort of transformative experience in 
formal and informal contexts. There are Christians who 
become atheists and vice versa. There are homophobes 
and transphobes who become pro-LGBTQ. There are 
climate change deniers who become major advocates of 
environmental education. It is vital to harness the facts 
that contributed to such transformation so that educa-
tors can draw from those narratives to enhance trans-
formative pedagogies. In transformative education, 
there is a major shift in students’ habits of thought and 
action (English, 2014). 

 It does not, therefore, suffice to create a syllabus 
for a creation’s sake. It has to be purposefully transfor-
mative, learner-centered, and laser-focused on building 
students’ 21st century competency skills. Incorpo-
rating multifaceted pedagogies ensures that learners 
are metacognitively reached so that they can become 
proficient in addressing 21st century problems. 

Characteristics of a Syllabus
The overall tone of a syllabus is undergirded by the 

university’s mission and vision statements as well as 
the teaching philosophy of the course instructor. Where 
there is no mission statement foregrounding the kind 
of education that the university values, there is likely 
going to be less uniformity in the curricular and ped-
agogic approaches across syllabi. Thus, it is of utmost 
importance to review and incorporate the mission and/
or vision statements of the university and departmental 
college into the syllabus because they serve as overar-
ching guiding tone and direction in the development of 
the curriculum as well as the instruction. Here are a few 
examples of university mission and vision statements 
and how they can shape the development of syllabi in 
these institutions:

Mission statement of the University of Michigan (UM)
“The mission of the University of Michigan is 
to serve the people of Michigan and the world 
through preeminence in creating, communicat-
ing, preserving and applying knowledge, art, 
and academic values, and in developing leaders 
and citizens who will challenge the present and 
enrich the future” (umich.edu).

It is evident from this mission statement that UM values 
critical thinking skills, leadership skills, civic education, 
knowledge creation and knowledge application. It is up 

to the instructors to infuse theses values in their syllabi. 

Mission statement of the Ball State University 
(BSU)

“We engage students in educational, research, 
and creative endeavors that empower our gradu-
ates to have fulfilling careers and meaningful lives 
enriched by lifelong learning and service, while 
we enhance the economic, environmental, and 
social vitality of our community, our state, and 
our world” (bsu.edu).  
BSU’s mission statement iterates research, cre-

ativity, preparing students for fulfilling careers, social, 
environmental, and economic sustainability. This mis-
sion statement gives a bigger picture of the university’s 
overarching goal that instructors in that institution use 
or ought to use as a starting point when designing a 
syllabus. 

Vision Statement of Indiana University (IU)
“Our mission is to provide broad access to un-
dergraduate and graduate education for students 
throughout Indiana, the United States, and the 
world, as well as outstanding academic and cul-
tural programs and student services.

We seek to create dynamic partnerships 
with our communities in economic, social, and 
cultural development and to offer leadership in 
creative solutions for 21st-century problems, and 
we strive to achieve full diversity and maintain 
friendly, collegial, and humane environments, 
with a strong commitment to academic freedom.

To achieve our vision as one of the great re-
search universities of the 21st century, we will:
• Provide an excellent, relevant, and responsive 

education across a wide range of disciplines 
in baccalaureate, graduate, and professional 
education, to students from all backgrounds

• Pursue excellent world-class research, scholar-
ship, and creative activity

• Engage in the economic, social, civic, and cul-
tural development of Indiana, the nation, and 
the world by building on the base of excellence 
in research and education” (iub.edu).

IU has a comprehensive vision statement that covers 
almost all the various mission iterations of UM and BSU. 
Some of the major highlights of its vision statement in-
clude: access to higher education, research, leadership 
skills in creativity, academic freedom, inclusion, diversi-
ty, social, economic, and civic vitality of the community.



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 28

Each university is established to address the socie-
tal needs and the labor shortage of the state or region 
in which it is located. National and international needs 
are often secondary at the creation of the institution, 
but could subsequently occupy frontline positions in 
the institution’s curriculum. A well-crafted syllabus in 
MU, BSU, and IU will explicitly and implicitly address 
most of the major themes of the university’s mission 
statement. The syllabi may foreground specific content 
knowledge, ways of knowing, communication, research, 
experiential learning, environmental sustainability, 
collaboration, creativity, problem-solving skills, and 
community service. A university’s mission/vision 
statement sets the tone of an educational culture on 
the entire campus. Such a tone is then replicated in the 
various syllabi throughout the campus. A course sylla-
bus needs to adhere to institutional framework in order 
to fulfil the objectives of that institution. Most of the 
current university’s missions are designed to cultivate 
in students the 21st century competency skills. 

Interpreting Course Code 
Another notable and indispensable characteristic of 

a syllabus is the course code. Course codes are identity 
markers that differentiate one course from another in 
terms of discipline and level of study. On designing a 
syllabus, instructors need to be aware of the meanings 
of the subject code and the catalog number in order to 
provide content and assessments that are appropriate 
for students’ developmental and academic readiness. 
Undergraduate courses typically have the subject code 
and the catalog number ranging from 100 to 499. For 
example, the course PSYC 101 has PSYC as the subject 
code that represents the Psychology discipline while 
the catalog number, 101, shows the level of study. The 
first digit indicates specific level of study while the rest 
of the digits are defined by the different levels of course 
strength. Therefore, a course that starts with 1 as in 
PSYC 101 shows that it is a foundational course while 
level 2 courses start with 2 such as in PSYC 201, indicat-
ing that it is an expansive foundational course. Levels 3 
and 4 courses typically require prerequisites because 
they require more advanced thinking skills and demon-
stration of in-depth knowledge.

Universal Components of a Syllabus 
Although there is seldom a standardized syllabus 

format, there are, however, some major characteris-
tics of a learner-centered syllabus. The characteristics 
which can be grouped into four broad categories

include: contact information, institutional statements, 
objective information, and course policies. 

Category One: Contact information
In this category, the first page of the syllabus starts 

with a boldly marked name of the institution, followed 
by the course title (e.g., XXX 100), course sections, 
semester in which the course is offered, meeting dates 
and time, room number, instructor’s name, e-mail 
address, phone number of the instructor, office address, 
and office hours. If there is a graduate assistant as-
signed to the instructor, their name and e-mail ad-
dress should also be included. The information on this 
category should not cover more than ¼ of a standard 
A4 size page. The contact information is particularly 
helpful to first-generation college students because 
provides them information about the location of their 
classes and ways to contact their professors at any giv-
en moment. This helps reduce stress and anxiety that 
students tend to experience in their first year in college. 

Category Two: Institutional statements
At the end of contact information on an A4 size 

page, there are mandatory institutional statements 
that are cut and pasted into the syllabus. The content 
encompasses university’s mission statement, institu-
tional statements about diversity and inclusion, disabil-
ity services, writing center, and technology help desk. 
Some institutions also include statements forewarning 
students against plagiarism, tobacco use and alcohol-
ism on campus. All these statements are invaluable to 
the entire student body because they contain policies 
that reiterate institutional expectations and provide 
information about the various services that are offered 
by the university to accommodate students’ needs in 
the areas of technology, disabilities, library services, 
learning, and writing centers. Universities want these 
statements to be included in all syllabi to ensure a wid-
er dissemination and digestion of their message. Not 
all institutions have all the statements. Instructors are 
not advised to borrow and use statements from anoth-
er university. They should design their syllabi with the 
institutional information that has been made available 
to them by the hierarchy. In many universities in the 
United States, professors receive emails weeks before 
the beginning of each semester on institutional state-
ments that must be part of the syllabus.

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 29

Category Three: Objective Information
Objective information encompasses narrative about 

the course, the purpose and the rationale of the course, 
prerequisites and/or co-requisites courses that must 
be taken before or along the current course, course 
objectives or competencies, course materials and texts, 
assignments, final exam or final project, rubric, grade 
criteria, course calendar, and supplemental reading 
sources. Under objective information, the instructors 
explain clearly what the course is all about, why it is 
important for the students, why it is necessary for 
their chosen program, and why they should sign up 
for the course. One of the best ways to retain students’ 
interests in the course from the outset is to give them 
a palpable rationale as to why the course is being 
offered, stating persuasively how it would fulfil their 
program requirements and how it would contribute to 
their career growth and/or to the better of the society. 
If there is a prerequisite course, it has to be stated in 
the syllabus as a prerequisite requirement. Sometimes, 
some courses are taken alongside one other course. If 
it is the case with the course that is being designed, the 
co-requisite should be stated in the front page. 

In transformative education, there is a paradigm 
shift from course objectives to course competencies. 
Historically, syllabi that are developed from the per-
spective of lesson objectives focus more on what stu-
dents should know by the end of the course, whereas 
competency-based approach to course design focuses 
on what students should be able to do by the end of the 
course. In order to effectively state and subsequent-
ly assess learning competencies and critical thinking 
skills, action verbs are employed to state course compe-

tencies as advocated in the Bloom’s Taxonomy graphic-
shown in Figure 1. 

“Remember” and “Understand” are at the bottom 
of the pyramid of Bloom’s taxonomy because they 
represent static verbs and require the least amount of 
learning effort. Instructors should take this graph into 
serious consideration when developing learning com-
petencies and assessments of a course. 

In selecting the course reading material, instructors 
should ensure that the reading material are void of sex-
ism, racism, ethnocentrism, colorism, ableism, ageism, 
xenophobia, homophobia and all other isms and pho-
bias that affect people negatively. This is an opportunity 
for champions of decolonization to decolonize their 
curriculum making by choosing reading material that 
are devoid of dehumanizing and colonizing language 
and history. It is also an opportunity to empower stu-
dents in the learning process by offering them choice 
readings (Sleeter, 2008), mirror and window curricu-
lum (Style, 1988), and place-based curriculum (Preston, 
2015). One of the essential information that students 
look for in a syllabus is the text because they want to 
buy it or order it online in time. 

 Furthermore, the syllabus contains detailed 
information about the course assessment process. It 
includes assignment descriptions, grading rubrics, 
submission modes, deadlines, and cut-off time after 
which submissions may or may not be accepted with or 
without a penalty. Each assignment should also include 
instructor’s preference for total word count, stipulated 
margin, font, and font size. A rubric is a scoring sheet 
that shows students how their work will be graded. It 
provides more clarity to students as to what is expected

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

Fig. 1. Courtesy of Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching (Armstrong, 2010)



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 30

of them while saving time to instructors because they 
do not have to give detailed written feedback since it is 
already included in the rubric. In the syllabus, students 
are also given the range of scores and their equivalent 
grades in the rubric, known as grade criteria. For exam-
ple, the grade criteria have to show in the syllabus that 
94% upward in an exam is an A grade and that 59% 
downward is F. Varying assignments or exam formats is 
also important because it allows students who are not 
good test-takers in a proctored room to excel in other 
assignments done in stress-free settings. 

Another vital aspect of the objective information 
in a syllabus is the reading calendar. There must be a 
reading or video/audio linked to each class meeting 
date. For instance, if a class meets on Monday and 
Wednesday each week, the syllabus should indicate the 
reading tasks assigned for each day. Students have to 
be informed on the first day of class that the readings 
are meant for them to read before coming to class. 
Each digital reading title should indicate in parenthesis 
where and how it could be accessed. If it is a book chap-
ter, reference should be made about the specific book 
and the specific chapter including the page range. 

Category Four: Miscellaneous course policies
Course policies in this category embody clarifica-

tion of behavioral and attitudinal expectations, infor-
mation about class attendance, late and missing assign-
ments/exams, nature of participation in activities, and 
general ethics. Some degree programs assess students 
on professional dispositions which can include general 
behavior and attitude, dress code, and punctuality. In 
the absence of an institutional statement on plagiarism 
and copyright issues, an instructor may insert their 
own personally worded statement into the syllabus to 
minimize plagiarism. If the course includes field expe-
rience or fieldwork component, the information should 
be incorporated into the syllabus so that students can 
plan accordingly. Students need to be aware of how long 
it would take their instructor to respond to e-mails. 
Most instructors respond within 24 hours on weekdays. 
It is necessary to defer to the institutional policy with 
respect to instructor’s promptitude in e-mail responses. 

It is worth noting that the structure of syllabus 
and the sequencing of the content should be given due 
consideration. The foregoing categories define a gener-
al logical order that a typical learner-centered syllabus 
should follow. Sequencing of course content in a way 
that promotes scaffolding from the simplest concept to 

the most complex one in the learning process is very 
prior to the first class of the semester. Ideally, a syllabus 
should be made available to students a week before 
important. However, owing to the limited scope of this 
paper, content sequencing techniques will be a separate 
paper.

Syllabus Accessibility 
Once the syllabus is fully designed and meticulously 
edited to ensure clarity, the instructor should make 
it available to the students at least twenty-four hours 
classes begin so that they will have ample time to 
purchase and ship the course texts and other learn-
ing tools before the start of the semester. According 
to a survey conducted by CampusBooks.com (2016), 
67% of the students surveyed said they purchase used 
textbooks while 55% said they rent textbooks for their 
courses each semester. Other research institutions 
have conducted similar research. According to Kelly 
(2019), 58% of students who responded to a survey 
on students’ habits toward purchasing textbooks said 
they buy at least one textbook on Amazon. Only 51% 
said they buy books at their campus bookstore. In the 
survey, one student said, “School Bookstore typically 
charges 3x as much as ordering from Amazon or anoth-
er site.” Therefore, it is imperative to share the syllabus 
days or weeks before the start of the semester or at the 
very least, provide information about the text weeks 
earlier. 

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are the 
platforms that instructors in developed countries use to 
share a lot of information with students. Many devel-
oping countries cannot afford the cost of these learn-
ing management systems (LMS) like Blackboard and 
Canvas which are designed for schools, colleges, and 
universities. LMS are used for e-learning as well as to 
post all relevant information about a course including 
syllabi, assignments, rubrics, assignment submission 
portal, attendance tracking, and grade postings. In 
countries where universities cannot afford these learn-
ing management systems, there are other options that 
faculty members can use to communicate with students 
for free. There are moodle.com, Google Classroom, 
Whatsapp, Telegram, etc. A hard copy of a syllabus 
should be made available to students who do not have 
access to the internet. The first day of class should also 
be used to read through the syllabus with the students. 
Considering that the instructor’s role in the classroom 
is to help students maximize learning outcomes, going 
over the syllabus thoroughly helps clarify nebulous

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 31

areas in the syllabus and set the students up for success 
right from the beginning of the semester. While what 
a student discovers in the course of learning is more 
important than what they cover in class, it is crucial for 
students to have full access to what is being covered so 
as to plan ahead of each class session. 

Uses of a syllabus
A well-designed syllabus facilitates teaching and 

learning. It shows a clear pattern of teaching and learn-
ing activities built into the course (Slattery & Carlson, 
2016). Considering the importance of a syllabus and its 
ubiquity in higher education in developed countries, it 
is rather ironic that there is limited research about it. 
According to Littlefield (1999) a syllabus has several 
functions:

- It facilitates teaching because it enables teachers 
to plan better in advance.

- It serves as a binding document between the 
students and the instructor.

- It sets the tone of the course for the entire 
semester.

- It helps students plan their learning carefully.
- It ensures smooth and effective continuity of the 

course content from the originator of the course 
to subsequent instructors given that there is 
always a master syllabus that is safely kept by the 
department chair.  Instructors teaching an old 
course for the first time use the master syllabus 
as a starting point in developing their own 
syllabus. They have to build from the previous 
instructor’s syllabus otherwise the original goal 
of the course could very easily be misconstrued 
and bastardized overtime. 

- It serves as an artifact for promotion, tenure, and 
for job applications for instructors. 

- It can also be argued that a syllabus minimizes 
students’ unnecessary outreach to the instructor 
since effective syllabi pre-emptively answer 
students’ questions. 

Course expectations set forth in the syllabus and 
explained by the instructor on the first day of class can 
affect students’ interest in the course on the first day of 
the class. Transformative educators do not scare stu-
dents away from their course; they attract them to their 
course and work with them to address any individual 
concern about the course. In addition, using the sylla-
bus as a contractual document between the student and 
the instructor is very important because students have

the propensity to feel cheated in their grades when they 
did not do well in a test. To avoid any possible lawsuit 
from students, some universities even require students 
to read and sign the syllabus on the first day of the 
course so that students cannot successfully challenge in 
a court of law any aspect of the signed syllabus in due 
course. 

The syllabus can serve as an artifact in a job appli-
cation portfolio. It is common for faculty applying for 
a college/university teaching position to carry along 
to interviews their portfolio which, among many other 
things, includes syllabi of the different courses they 
have taught. It is also a standard practice for faculty 
seeking tenure and promotion to include copies of 
syllabi of all the courses they have designed and/or 
taught. When evaluating professors’ teaching skills, 
evaluators (who most often are peers) are expected 
to review the faculty’s syllabi and observe them teach. 
Thus, an instructor’s teaching philosophy can be easily 
gauged through a review of the syllabus than through a 
one-session teaching observation.  

Backward design of a syllabus
According to Wiggins and McTighe (2005) back-

ward design entails developing a syllabus beginning 
with course goals and working backward to lay bare 
what learners need to know in order to meet them as 
opposed to the traditional method which focuses on the 
coverage of topics and contents recommended by the 
government or accreditation bodies. While instructors 
may erroneously want to begin a syllabus design with 
content and technical details, a syllabus creation should 
begin with the goals, objectives and competencies, stat-
ing the skills students should be able to demonstrate by 
the end of the course. In the backward design process, 
instructors ensure that attention is paid not only to 
content coverage, but also to the purpose, usefulness, 
and the impact of the course on students. The follow-
ing preliminary questions are crucial in the syllabus 
creation process:

1. What is important for students to learn?
2. How will the instructor and their students see 

learning happening?
3. What will the instructor and the students need 

to do for learning to take place?
With a backward design, instructors are able to 

align their course goals and learning objectives with 
teaching activities as well as with course assessments. 
In this regard, students are consistently familiar with 
the course content and its goals. There are three stages

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 32

of backward design: 
Stage One: Desired Outcomes: At this stage, the 

instructor starts the syllabus design with a deep re-
flection on the goals, objectives/competencies of the 
course by pondering over questions such as: What is 
important for learners to know and do by the end of the 
course? What knowledge or skills are students expect-
ed to acquire by the end of the course? What standards 
are supposed to be met? What are the transfer com-
petencies that are expected? When the course compe-
tencies have been conceptualized and stated in active 
verbs, the instructor then reflects profoundly on the 
different measurable evidence which is in Stage Two of 
this process.   

Stage Two: Acceptable evidence for instructors 
and students: This stage is about assessments and 
evaluations. How does an instructor assess students 
understanding and progress to determine whether or 
not learning occurred? What will an instructor consider 
as acceptable proficiency of the learning outcomes? The 
instructor comes up with different assessment tools 
that effectively measure the learning outcomes of Stage 
One. 

Stage Three: Learning activities: What sorts of 
learning material and activities are put in place that will 
result in the evidence of desired outcomes being met? 

As shown in these three stages, instead of starting a 
course curriculum with dense content of what students 
should learn, the instructor commences with what they 
envision as desired outcomes and walk backward to 
the content which embodies the learning activities. In 
planning the course, some of the critical questions that 
guide an instructor in the choice of learning material 
and activities are: What learning material is suitable for 
achieving the course objectives/competencies? How 
will this material be sequenced to maximize knowledge 
acquisition? What pedagogic activities will accelerate 
knowledge gain, knowledge transfer and knowledge 
application in real-world contexts? Careful responses 
to the foregoing questions would ensure an effective 
planning and development of the syllabus. 

Conclusion
Using a backward design to develop an effective 

syllabus that employs different pedagogic approaches 
to impart knowledge in students should be the priority 
instead of focusing on exposing them to large quantity 
of contents through the traditional lecture method that 
they can barely retain (Cooper et al., 2016). Miller 

(1927) defined lecture method as “… that mysterious 
process by means of which the contents of the note-
book of the professor are transferred through the 
instrument of the fountain pen to the note-book of the 
student without passing through the mind of either.” In 
employing transformative learning theories to design a 
syllabus and teach 21st century skills, the instructional 
focus shifts from teaching objective facts to teaching 
core competencies of the course, critical thinking skills, 
problem-solving skills, information and computer 
literacy, collaboration, and creativity. A syllabus should 
promote heuristic pedagogy so that students can devel-
op more confidence in their abilities to handle complex 
problems.

Effective teaching is preceded by constructive 
learner-centered course planning that revolves around 
syllabus design. A 21st century syllabus that is aimed at 
maximizing learning outcomes should carry an over-
tone of learner-centered pedagogy throughout the syl-
labus. Reading materials, assignments, and instruction-
al strategies laid out in any syllabus should highlight 
twenty-first century skills as presented earlier. Some 
of these skills may not be woven into the core content 
of the course, rather they may occur mostly during the 
content delivery process, that is during the teaching of 
the course. A course may emphasize critical thinking 
and collaboration skills in their syllabus development 
by showing what sorts of learning, teaching, and assess-
ment activities may help accomplish the two skills. The 
physics instructor who is conscious of the 21st century 
skills that are being reiterated in the university may 
redesign the syllabus to ensure that the said skills are 
being covered through the curriculum or through the 
instruction. 

Education is designed to educate; to teach what is 
worth knowing, but that is not known. 

It is worth imagining what is worth knowing in 
community health today that is not known by citizens 
and the possible impact it has on their health, in par-
ticular, and their lives, in general. A carefully crafted 
learner-centered syllabus that demonstrates the trans-
formative potentials of education is what all college 
instructors should strive for in the courses they teach. 
Education is about transformation and that transfor-
mation entails changing frames of reference such as 
habits of minds, perspectives, and mindsets during an 
educational process to be more inclusive, reflective so 
as to transfer knowledge and apply it in other real-life 
contexts. A syllabus that promotes deeper learning and 
knowledge transfer maximizes learning outcomes.

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Ndemanu, Designing University Syllabi for 21st Century Skills Page 33

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Caralyn Zehnder, Cynthia Alby, Karynne Kleine, Julia Metzker. 
(2021). Learning that Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design 
for Transformative Education. Myers Education Press. 225 pp.  
$ 111 (Hardcover), ISBN: 978-1975504502 

In today’s 21st century, the traditional way of teaching has mostly 
given way to transformative education in which teachers should not 
only impart knowledge, but also facilitate the acquisition of skills by 
students (David, 2016). Educators in transformative education play 
the role of helping students to understand and acknowledge “the 
dynamics between their inner and outer worlds” (Boyd & Myers, 1988, 
p.261). This book provides guidance to teachers in the higher education 
system to help them design courses that can create meaningful learning 
experiences for students and actively engage them in social issues. 

Z. Zhang. Global Journal of  
Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.34176

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Zhang, 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

BOOK REVIEW

Zhaoyi Zhang

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

Summary
In this book, “learning” covers multiple layers of 

meaning, including learning theories, learning out-
comes and assessments, course design, teaching strate-
gies and techniques, etc. As educators who will pursue 
careers at universities or are already teaching in higher 
education, no matter whether you are novice or se-
nior, this book provides scaffolding for you from three 
aspects: a). how to design transformative lessons, how 
to create successful transformative learning experienc-
es for students, and how to shape the identity of the 
transformative teacher.

This book consists of 10 chapters. And each chapter 
is completed by a team of four brilliant and profession-
al educators who have specific disciplinary expertise. 
Collaboration is constantly brought up in the book. 
Whether it is the way the book is written or the various 
activities that are recommended throughout the book, 
readers will find traces of collaboration. This is the 
element that the authors are proud of.

Each chapter of the book covers ample content and 
inspiration. Chapter one (“Teaching Matters”) begins 
with the challenges that American higher education is 
facing in the present era, which include unequal distri-
bution of educational resources, teachers who are very 
productive in research but weak in pedagogical knowl-
edge, unequal power relations between “Black, Indig-
enous, and people of color (BIPOC) and their White 
counterparts” (p. 2), and the lack of capacity of higher 
education institutions to respond quickly to unexpected 
situations (e.g. Covid-19). All these problems are calling 
for changes in course design. The authors mention 
that educators in higher education institutions should 
regard exposing all of their students to transformative 
learning experiences as their teaching goal. This chap-
ter also contains the introduction for all four authors 
and their beliefs about course design and teachers’ 
professional development. At the end of this chapter, 
the authors provide a guide to using this book so that 
readers can get insights into how to get the most out of 
this book.



Zhang - Book Review: Learning That Matters Page 35

In chapter two (“From the Foundation Up”), the 
authors firstly mention that trying to turn the class-
room into a base for transformative education requires 
fostering creativity, and that means a degree of “impro-
visation” (p.18). This chapter provides four important 
concepts and principles for supporting this improvisa-
tion. The first one is about equity. The authors extract 
decentering pedagogy from critical theory, starting 
from no longer viewing students “within a deficit 
framework” (p. 27) and cherishing all students’ funds 
of knowledge, the authors then propose pedagogical 
approaches that promote equity. The second concept 
is aimed at the constructivist approach. In this sec-
tion, by explaining the crucial role of constructivism in 
acquiring knowledge, the authors remind readers that 
students in the classroom are not just passive recipi-
ents, and transformative education cannot be teach-
er-centered. The third concept emphasizes creativity 
in promoting students’ engagement. The authors point 
out that the course focusing on active learning could 
be helpful to students’ scores. It is vital for teachers to 
understand how motivation influences learning. The 
fourth concept, therefore, focuses on the role of motiva-
tion. In this part, the question of whether students are 
motivated by mastery or performance goals is dis-
cussed. In the end, the authors hope teachers who have 
already built their teaching foundations could think 
about how to connect these concepts and theories with 
students’ deep learning.

In chapter three (“Design Matter”), the authors shift 
the center from concepts to practical issues, focusing 
on course design. The aim of this chapter is trying to 
convince teachers that using design to guide teach-
ing can be a very beneficial thing for both teachers 
and students. Additionally, the authors provide three 
complementary and connected designing approach-
es for teachers, which are design thinking, backward 
design, and universal design for learning (UDL). In 
short, design thinking is human/student-centered. It 
firstly needs teachers to develop empathy and collect 
students’ information before class, then anticipates the 
kinds of problems they will encounter in their classes, 
lists the worst possible outcomes for their classes, and 
find out the solutions in advance. This approach offers 
a framework for planning courses that are closely tied 
to the student experience. Backward design is a course 
design approach guided by learning objectives, which 
requires teachers to think about what students need 
most to be successful. For UDL, it is an approach consid-
ering serving more students. It aims at establishing a

learning environment to support students’ diversity. In 
the end, the authors mention that the strategies provid-
ed in this chapter are important and will be repeatedly 
mentioned in the following chapters.

Chapter four (“Portable Outcomes”) is about porta-
ble outcomes, which means that students can take what 
they learn in one class to subsequent classes, and even 
to later work and life, rather than outcomes that are 
forgotten once the test is completed. In this chapter, the 
authors begin by differentiating the definition of stu-
dent learning outcomes (SLOs) and aspirational goals. 
Compared with aspirational goals which could be long-
term and ideal, SLOs are more specific and measurable, 
which refer to as knowledge, skills, and dispositions. 
Before introducing how to design SLOs, the authors 
demonstrate the “alignment” between SLOs and “the 
coherence students experience” in the classroom. 
(p.83). Then, the authors give suggestions for how to 
write substantive SLOs. They should be student-cen-
tered, measurable, interlude, and inclusive. Specifically, 
students are able to know what they should anticipate 
from the course, and realize how they will perform in 
class to meet the outcomes. In addition, the authors 
mention that substantive SLOs should take affection 
into consideration, which means that teachers should 
present clearly what they want their students to care 
about after finishing the course. What is more, well-de-
signed SLOs should also care about students’ diversity 
so as to avoid biases. In the end, the authors advocate 
that after encompassing the above four characteristics, 
a truly portable goal must be to help students achieve 
higher order thinking skills that include analyzing and 
evaluating.

Chapter five provides an approach, which is also a 
framework, called the Dilemma, Issue, or Question Ap-
proach (DIQ). The authors summarize it as an approach 
to connecting subject knowledge with social issues. 
Teachers utilize this approach to guide students using 
the knowledge they have learnt in class to solve real so-
cial problems. The authors point out that by doing this, 
students can more easily understand the usefulness of 
the knowledge and the reason why they need to learn 
it. In this chapter, multiple resources including refer-
ence websites and books are given to help readers think 
about how to design their DIQ framework. The authors 
also focus on describing the four steps of designing DIQ 
from brainstorming to getting feedback. It is important 
to summarize from the authors that DIQ breaks the 
status quo that critical thinking skill is only limited to 
“elitist activity” (p. 114).

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Zhang - Book Review: Learning That Matters Page 36

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

In Chapter six (“Connected Assessment”), the 
authors spend a great deal of time explaining assess-
ment-related knowledge. The significance of this 
chapter is evident in the way that it helps address 
teachers’ ongoing focus on what a few students can-
not do, in suggesting that teachers need to think about 
how to support the progress of all students, and in the 
need to recognize the strengths that each individual 
brings to the classroom. The authors start by express-
ing their concerns about unequal issues brought about 
by today’s assessments. In the next part, instead of 
explaining “assessment jargon”, the authors present 
assessment along “two continuums”, which are from 
connected to unconnected assessment, and from sum-
mative to formative assessment. In terms of comparing 
unconnected and connected assessment, the authors 
interpret connected assessment as the one which un-
derlines the growth and achievements of students. It is 
aligned with SLOs with a stepped increase in difficulty 
as a way to see students’ progress. The authors also 
compare formative and summative assessment and sug-
gest that formative assessment is not done by scoring 
at the end, but by collecting and using the information 
obtained during the learning process to change and 
improve students’ learning process. It is a relatively fair 
way of assessing. The rest of the chapter is reserved for 
how to provide effective feedback to students, which 
also contains the forms, focuses, rubrics that teachers 
need to pay attention to when they give feedback. 

Chapter seven (“The Power of Projects”) involves 
some of the practical skills that teachers use to design 
classroom activities that can effectively engage stu-
dents and are simultaneously convenient for teach-
ers to give formative feedback. The authors start this 
chapter by explaining the reason for the popularity of 
project-based learning. Then, three characteristics that 
should be equipped by a good project are explained in 
detail by the authors, which are authentic, collabora-
tive, and transparent. The authors give many examples 
of actual classroom activities to make these three char-
acteristics more visual and tangible. 

Chapter eight (“Strategies that Matters”) mentions 
teaching strategies which could lead to significant 
learning. The authors introduce a concept of high-qual-
ity strategies which should be “active and engaging, 
intrinsically motivating, sticky, and culturally affirming” 
(p.207). A good high-quality strategy does not have 
to meet all of these characteristics, but it does need to 
equip many of them. Next, the authors mention the

need for teachers to develop different strategies at dif-
ferent stages of learning. The authors also give different 
and respective suggestions and activities that teachers 
can do to prepare students for learning, engage stu-
dents in learning, discuss in the classroom, and make 
learning visible so that teachers can choose and im-
plement them according to their own conditions and 
classroom conditions. This chapter concludes with a 
guide for readers to reflect on their own strategies and 
a summary of high-quality strategies so that readers 
will have a deeper understanding of what strategies can 
cause deep and significant learning.

In chapter nine (“Supporting Students”), how to 
provide targeted support to students to ensure their 
success, effectively address inequities in education, and 
ensure enduring learning is a core topic. The authors 
provide ideas from four perspectives. Firstly, teachers 
should guide students to find value in learning, which 
means that if students can understand the purpose of 
the course and tap into the value of the course, they 
can be more engaged. Secondly, the authors mention 
that by praising students for their efforts and scoring 
less, teachers should provide the support that allows 
students to be unafraid of challenges and setbacks, and 
allows students to develop a “growth mindset” (p.263). 
Thirdly, Teachers have the responsibility to make 
students find a sense of belonging in the classroom. 
Lastly, the authors mention the negative stereotype 
that students develop when they experience setbacks, 
which is also called “stereotype threat” in the chapter. It 
is important to help students reflect on their self-values 
to counter this stereotype. 

As a summary and ending chapter, chapter ten 
(“Your Turn: Self- and Collective Efficacy”) plays a cru-
cial role in helping reshape a transformative teacher’s 
identity. As was mentioned in Chapter two that inno-
vation is vital for developing transformative education. 
The authors in this chapter introduce Bandura’s “col-
lective-efficacy” to underline the significance of collab-
oration for innovation (p.281). At the same time, it is 
also important to build a community of mutual trust 
and respect for students, in which students can obtain 
the necessary skills. The authors also recommend that 
teachers join or establish teacher learning communi-
ties, or “communities of change agents”. There they 
can monitor and help each other to become qualified 
transformative educators (p.287).



Zhang - Book Review: Learning That Matters Page 37

Evaluation
The authors have succeeded in achieving the goal of 

improving and expanding teachers’ skill sets described 
at the beginning of the book. Especially when reading 
chapters 3-9, which encompass all the things educators 
should consider when designing a course.

The whole book is highly readable and interactive. 
As I took notes while reading, I found that I could easily 
extract the key information from each chapter and 
understand it without much difficulty. Another strength 
of the book is reflected in its writing structure. Each 
chapter begins with a Preflection in a box, which may be 
a thought-provoking question or a small survey, giving 
the reader a preliminary idea of the chapter’s content 
before they even start reading the text. Next, the au-
thors list the activities they set up in this chapter and 
what they hope the reader will ultimately gain from the 
chapter’s contents. By doing this, the authors make the 
outcomes of the chapter transparent to readers, which 
allows the scrutiny from readers when they finish this 
chapter. In writing each chapter, instead of explaining 
theories and concepts, the authors present numerous 
activities, their own experiences, and evidence-based 
strategies. After presenting a piece of content, the 
authors set up a “reflect to learn” session, asking one or 
two questions to give readers a short buffer and reflec-
tion time before moving on to the next module to better 
consolidate what they have just read. Each chapter 
follows the same pattern, starting with Preflection and 
ending with ensuring that the readers can make the de-
sign happen. With this step-by-step guidance, readers 
will become more and more confident and motivated.

Conclusion
Overall, facilitating students to find motivation and 

meaning in the university’s classroom, acquiring the 
competence needed for the 21st century, realizing and 
addressing social inequities are goals that teachers 
should be committed to designing their courses, and 
that is also what this book is trying to help teachers 
achieve. As a guide book, Learning That Matters: A Field 
Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education is 
suitable for both individual educators and a group, like 
a faculty study group, since collaboration is ceaseless-
ly mentioned throughout the book. Teachers can also 
practice the activities and evidence-based strategies in 
the book in a selective manner. 

References

David V. J. Bell. (2016). Twenty-first Century Education: 
Transformative Education for Sustainability and Re-
sponsible Citizenship. Journal of Teacher Education 
for Sustainability, 18(1), 48-56.

Robert D. Boyd & J. Gordon Myers. (1988). Transfor-
mative education. International Journal of Lifelong 
Education, 7(4), 261-284.

Zhaoyi Zhang (zhazhang@iu.edu) is Ph.D. student in the 
Literacy, Culture, and Language Education Program, 
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, School of 
Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 
USA.

Author



Osei-Kofi, N., Boovy, B., & Furman, K. (Eds.). (2022). 
Transformative approaches to social justice education: 
Equity and access in the college classroom. Routledge. 304 
pp. $ 31.96 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-0367551032

While social justice has become an increasing priority in many public 
institutions in the country, the Difference, Power, and Discrimination 
program at Oregon State University has been enlightening 
undergraduates for 30 years. Born out of student advocacy and the 
faculty that supports them, the program is an established collection of 
diversity education courses and faculty training seminars. The program 
has survived budget cuts, critics, and other challenges throughout its 30 
years. Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education describes 
the methods of the program pragmatically and unflinchingly so readers 
of the book can apply them to their classrooms.

M. A. Medved. Global Journal of  
Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.34260

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Zhaoyi, 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

BOOK REVIEW

Michelle A. Medved

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

 Introduction
The book is comprised of four sections, all of which 

feature strategies and methods from DPD faculty that 
teach undergraduate students about different aspects 
of identity. Accessibility needs, race, gender, sexuality, 
and economic class differences are all addressed in the 
book. Additionally, a wide array of techniques is utilized 
throughout the book. Everything from collaborating 
with archivists and farmworker unions to incorporat-
ing social justice into STEM coursework is discussed. 
DPD is a requirement for undergraduates within their 
general education classes, but it does not add to the 
number of credits the students need to take (Osei-Kofi, 
et al., 2021, p. x-xi). It has the two-fold benefits of both 
broadening white students’ perspectives and helping 
students from historically marginalized groups feel 
more included. Faculty have also benefited from this 
program, which features specific training programs to

help faculty embody the spirit of DPD within their 
classes and pedagogy. 

The following review will cover the book’s four 
sections in order, touching on its fifteen chapters and 
their respective authors. The first section, “Archives 
and Power: Engaging History Collaboratively,” covers 
the history of the DPD program and how to incorporate 
diverse narratives through history. The second section, 
“Frameworks for Transformative Pedagogies” discusses 
the challenges of making courses more accessible both 
in the classroom and online. “Destabilizing Dominant 
Narratives,” the third section, addresses the triumphs 
and challenges of teaching difficult subjects such as 
race, economic class, and transgender rights. The 
final section, “Rethinking Approaches to Disciplinary 
Content” provides the reader with meaningful ways 
to incorporate social justice topics in both STEM and 
humanities-based courses.



Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education Page 39

Section 1: Archives and Power: Engaging History 
Collaboratively

Echoing the sentiments of the introduction, the first 
chapter by Kali Furman addresses the circumstances 
in which the DPD program was created. It starts by 
addressing the racist founding of the state of Oregon. 
Oregon’s state constitution is the only one created with 
a clause banning Black people from residing there (p. 
4). When Oregon State University was founded, it too 
became an institution based on the interests of white 
Americans, including being established on the stolen 
land of Native Americans (p. 5). Over time, the demands 
of students and the student body’s diversity have 
grown. After incidences of racism on campus over the 
decades, student activists proposed creating a diver-
sity education program to try to make the university 
more inclusive (p. 3). The fact that the DPD program 
has survived multiple budget cuts and other threats to 
its existence, is a testament to the power of OSU stu-
dent advocacy and the faculty that supports them. The 
creation of the program and its continued existence 
demonstrates the ongoing need for such a program at a 
primarily white institution. Crucially, Furman notes that 
white and students of color still have “divergent” expe-
riences at OSU (p. 5). Consequently, the legacy of “stu-
dent activism and institutional moves to create offices 
or programs” to undertake “issues around diversity and 
inequity continue today” (p. 5).

The following two chapters, written by archivist 
Natalia Fernandez and ethnic scholar Natchee Blu 
Barnd, feature methods for teaching social justice 
through history. Fernandez shares the powerful possi-
bilities for archival texts to promote social justice both 
within OSU and in the larger community. She shares 
her collaboration with professors to create eye-opening 
document analysis activities for students. When voices 
were absent from the OSU archives, Fernandez sought 
to find representation for them. Fernandez and Boovy 
co-founded the OSU Queer Archives in 2014 and have 
expanded it with the help of student interviewers (pp. 
22-25). Barnd’s chapter details his students’ creation 
of social justice tours of the college town in which OSU 
is located. He describes how walking tours “remind us 
to pay attention to our relationships to the land (and its 
people) wherever we find ourselves,” something that he 
attributes to his upbringing as an indigenous man (p. 
43).  From the beginning of each course, “the students 
directly practice techniques for collecting, analyzing, 
and incorporating community histories and highlight-
ing contested productions of geography, especially in

relation to race and racism” (p. 44). After taking a tour, 
the shared stories come to him every time he walks 
by that location. Both Fernandez and Barnd provide 
practical ways to implement these activities and events. 
Universities’ archival resources provide transforma-
tive tools for sharing new perspectives on history with 
students.

Section 2: Frameworks for Transformative  
Pedagogies

Chapters Four and Five carry important reminders 
of equity and accessibility for anyone in the education 
field. Written by Jenkins and Smith, Chapter Four cov-
ers instructional design and their efforts to improve the 
accessibility of courses for students with disabilities 
through the principles of Universal Design. Jenkins also 
shares her experiences with having disabilities while 
in academia. Their chapter discusses the ubiquity of 
ableism in academia and how Universal Design prin-
ciples can help fight ableism (pp. 68-69). The chapter 
features recommendations for implementation, includ-
ing a tool for identifying the perceived challenges of an 
assignment and encouraging consideration for what 
consequences an academic requirement might have 
(pp. 76-78). They suggest providing options that best 
fit the needs of students including flexible attendance 
and multiple modalities to demonstrate learning (pp. 
80-83).

In Chapter Five, Myers expounds on many of the 
same concerns as Jenkins and Smith but for online 
academic settings. She argues, “design principles for 
accessibility should be a baseline” for online course 
design and suggests going further by including cultur-
al responsiveness (p. 99). Because online courses can 
exasperate inequities and accessibility issues, Myers 
explains some of the steps that instructors can take to 
allow flexibility, alleviate some of the instructor-student 
power imbalances, and enlighten students to institu-
tional discrimination through course tasks (pp. 90-96). 
Myers successfully brings awareness to considerable 
injustices and guides online instructors on how to pro-
mote greater equity and accessibility in their courses.

Chapters Six and Seven share many commonali-
ties in the internal, empathetic work that they suggest 
instructors and students take part in to bring greater 
awareness to injustices. Though the chapters cover 
different frameworks, they are both highly internalized 
and potentially emotionally difficult. Clough warns in 
Chapter Six that teaching peace literacy requires a deep 
personal understanding of one’s biases and it can be 

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Page 40

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

draining (p.106). Pitcher and Martinez note in Chap-
ter Seven that the sentipensante work, largely done 
through reflective activities, is not something that 
everyone is ready for, especially in a public setting 
(p.136). If one is ready to take on this work, then 
Clough suggests peace literacy to build empathic soft 
skills and promote consciousness to both personal and 
structural biases and the systems that perpetuate them 
(pp. 106-107). Pitcher and Martinez describe sentipen-
sante as more of a belief system to promote one’s sense 
of belonging and restore their sense of being able to 
live their life wholly (pp. 127-129). Although powerful 
philosophies, both chapters hint at the challenges of 
tackling emotional issues correctly in the classroom. 
There needs to be extensive training and personal 
reflection on the instructor’s part to lead these types 
of activities (p. 129). These chapters should serve as 
a primer to these frameworks and further exploration 
should be done before attempting to use them in the 
classroom. However, when well done, students can 
“gain confidence, find strength, and resilience through 
their narratives combined with history and social is-
sues” (p. 135).

Section 3: Destabilizing Dominant Narratives
Containing some of the most engaging chapters of 

the book, Section Three aims directly at how to teach 
difficult topics of social justice and the impact a profes-
sor’s positionality can have on student interpretations 
of the content. Though positionality is prominent in 
Transformative Approaches, it is particularly addressed 
in how this section and Section Four’s Ronald Mize 
approach their respective social justice issues.

Chapters Eight and Nine prioritize bringing greater 
positionality to their respective fields. In Chapter Eight, 
Rakes and Driskill write about the specific inclusion 
of trans studies as part of its Queer Studies program. 
Within the field of Queer Studies, white voices have 
been dominant, and OSU’s QS courses work to disrupt 
that focus. Instead, by giving privilege to voices from 
people of color, various levels of (dis)abilities, and 
income levels, OSU’s program promotes intersection-
ality (pp. 146, 149). In doing this, white students must 
consider the spectrum of experiences and identities 
among the LGBTQ+ community and who is impacted by 
systems of oppression. They then teach how to grapple 
with anger at systemic oppression and put it towards 
“the fruit of collective liberation” instead of using anger 
to be destructive (P. 144). In Chapter Nine, Maldonado 
focuses on the ways that she incorporates intersection-

ality into her Latinx studies classes by including race 
and ethnicity, gender, and labor rights. She also reflects 
on how her own identity as a Latina impact how she 
is perceived by students. Many of her students have 
never had a Latinx educator before and they sometimes 
respond in different ways. Students of color may be 
validated by her presence and some, primarily white 
students seem to think she brings a “Latinx agenda” 
(pp. 160-161). These reactions from students bring a 
lot of assumptions to what can already be a difficult 
topic to teach. Additionally, Maldonado explains how 
she handles students who do not believe in her course’s 
relevance. She offers strategies to help students make 
personal connections and classroom exercises to 
discuss inequalities, workers’ rights, and unions (pp. 
167-168). Her inclusion of student reactions underlines 
both the work that educators of color can achieve, but 
also the biases they may encounter from others.

Growing up working-class herself, Hurst references 
back to her own identity in Chapter Ten. There seems 
to be a blind spot for the role economic class plays in a 
person’s identity, privilege, and understanding of the 
world. Hurst explains that while directly addressing 
economic class in the classroom is forceful, equally 
important is maintaining the privacy of those less priv-
ileged. Sharing personal experiences can be uncomfort-
able or even humiliating, especially for those that are 
less privileged. Instead, she suggests personal reflec-
tive exercises on privilege should be done privately or 
anonymously (pp. 181-182). However uncomfortable, 
we must keep tackling economic class and privilege. In 
talking about class, she explains, it helps “us build those 
necessary alliances between Black, Brown, and white 
people” to stop the “racists” from winning (p. 175). 

Boovy and Osei-Kofi finish the section by describing 
their individual experiences teaching about race at a 
predominantly white institution. They argue that OSU’s 
history, culture, and legacy all carry white dominance, 
which is why teaching about race is so crucial (p. 192). 
The teaching method that they share is “teacher as text” 
which started as a way for teachers to demonstrate 
their authentic selves and help students learn complex-
ity around social issues like race, poverty, and police 
brutality (p. 193). Both writers share their own expe-
riences of how their identities impacted how students 
respond to them for better or worse (pp. 196-201). 
They agree that misunderstandings will happen when 
teaching about race, which is why race must continue to 
be addressed (pp. 200-202).

Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education



Page 41

Section 4: Rethinking Approaches to Disciplinary 
Content

Koehlinger and Freehling-Burton begin the sec-
tion by delineating the importance of challenging the 
Christian-based norms of mainstream American cul-
ture, for the country is far more religiously diverse than 
it may appear (p. 207). They share how their faiths 
impact their teachings and students’ interpretations of 
their teachings (pp. 208-210). The chapter moves on to 
historical and contemporary anti-Semitism and Islam-
ophobia in the U.S. (pp. 216-223). The reader will come 
away from the chapter reflecting on the perpetration of 
Christian dominance and on how harmful stereotyping 
of non-Christians is damaging to religious tolerance in 
the U.S. (p. 212).

Mize is the first generation of his family to have 
not spent time in the fields. In Chapter Thirteen, he 
discusses the intentional design of his course, which 
focuses on farmworker justice movements throughout 
American history (p. 237). To tie in the DPD program 
requirements, there is a particular emphasis placed 
on “the social construction of difference, the historical 
and contemporary relevance of racism and other forms 
of institutional discrimination, and how these social 
categories shape the lived experiences of farmworkers 
residing in the United States” (p. 238). He frequently 
collaborates with a union leader for this course and 
is quick to explain how service-learning can be done 
poorly (p. 237). Aims to help farmworkers should not 
be an act of voyeurism (pp. 240-241). Mize’s thoughtful 
analysis of service-learning and consideration for the 
farmworkers make it one of the more impactful and 
meaningful chapters of the book.

In Chapter Fourteen, Borradaile challenges the 
perception that social justice education has no place in 
STEM courses. She meaningfully embeds intersections 
of STEM and human rights together, such as how the 
American government uses surveillance against po-
litical and racial groups (p. 257). Borradaile provides 
specifics on navigating these issues and what methods 
to use. One is using “affinity groups” where students 
work to come to a consensus on incidents of discrimi-
nation that have occurred at their university and how 
they should respond. Students discuss the pros and 
cons of different actions, recognizing that there often 
is not a perfect response (253-254). Additionally, she 
shares the unfamiliarity of teaching and learning about 
emotionally difficult topics for STEM instructors and 
students. Borradaile herself had to adjust and she has 
found that students understand best from first-person

narratives. It adds a voice to sometimes complex and 
difficult topics (255). Though challenging, Borradaile 
demonstrates that bridging STEM and social justice is 
possible.

Chapter Fifteen rounds out the book by alluding 
back to the power of teaching history in a reflective 
way. Richards describes her work to “disrupt students’ 
notions of objective research” and demonstrates that 
historical work is “intimate, value-laden, and rich with 
struggles and questions of self” (p. 268). Chappell and 
Richards remind us of the power of primary documents 
for helping students “see the multiple dimensions of 
systemic and pervasive mechanisms of oppression in 
operation on multiple scales (p. 266). By taking classic 
history teaching methods and layering them with crit-
ical analysis, Chappell and Richards add to what many 
history educators already do.

Evaluation
As an educator, the themes of social justice and an-

ti-racism have been recently reverberating throughout 
both the K-12 and postsecondary institutions that I am 
a part of. It would be easy to write this book off as one 
following the current trends. However, this compilation 
sets itself apart because of its thoughtfulness, variety, 
and experience. Few other universities, and institutions 
for that matter, have a diversity and inclusivity program 
that is thirty years old. Oregon State University was 
not just following a trend, but in response to student 
advocacy and demands three decades ago. What bet-
ter source to learn about teaching social justice than a 
pioneer in the field? 

This level of experience is reflected in the various 
methodologies described in Transformative Approach-
es. The best chapters describe thoughtful consideration 
and planning, drawing from learned experiences and 
student reactions. They also featured underrepresented 
topics, such as transgender and disability rights. No-
tably insightful chapters include Mize’s “Sí, se puede! 
Teaching farmworker justice” and Hurst’s “Talking 
about class” for their insight and consideration of both 
the topics they teach and the students they work with. 
Mize co-planned with a local union leader, deciding 
that “this could not be yet another class where students 
learn about farmworkers and to repeat the surface rep-
resentations of them” (p. 239). Mize’s community part-
nership with a local union, as well as archivist Natalia 
Fernandez’s collaborations with faculty, and Barnd’s 
local history tours are all examples of the ways the DPD 
program extends beyond the OSU campus.

Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Michelle A. Medved (michmedv@iu.edu) is a Ph.D. 
student and Associate Instructor in the Literacy, Culture, 
and Language Education Program in the Department 
of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education at 
Indiana University Bloomington. 

Author

Many chapters were helpful with specific strategies 
that could be somewhat simply implemented in busy 
educators’ lives. Myers’ “Critical Pedagogy Online” and 
Jenkins and Smith’s chapter covering Universal Design 
both provide thoughtful tools for making courses more 
accessible and flexible –especially pertinent in the time 
of a pandemic. For a handbook on social justice edu-
cation, the chapters that featured pragmatic, simple 
suggestions were often the most valuable.

The most difficult chapters often featured peda-
gogies or frameworks that were out of reach for the 
average reader. They contained warnings about need-
ing extensive training and not being for everyone. While 
the chapters served as primers on sentipensante and 
peace literacy, they also described deeply philosophical 
(perhaps even spiritual) cognitive work. The chapters 
provided exercises to utilize but were also tinged with 
the implication that the pedagogies were extremely 
difficult to conduct correctly. They seem to be more 
intimidating than easily accessible.

Page 42Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education

Conclusion
Transformative Approaches incorporates posi-

tionality, personal narratives, and experience-tested 
teaching methods to thoughtfully create a social justice 
handbook that educators from many fields will find 
valuable. Its personal sentiments and a wide variety of 
topics set it apart from other resources with a narrow-
er focus. Of its highlights are highly implementable 
strategies that have been time-tested and advocacy for 
underrepresented topics in diversity education. Its few 
downfalls are simply a few chapters that require much 
further education or lack realistic recommendations 
for classroom usage. Educators are busy and want 
practical takeaways. As Smith and Jenkins describe 
their approach to increasing course accessibility, it “is 
a pedagogical practice that requires ongoing commit-
ment and negotiation” (p. 80). Achieving greater equity 
and promoting social justice in educational institutions 
must also take this long-haul, step by step approach, 
hence the importance of manageable frameworks and 
methods like this book provides.



Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3  

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In Memoriam: Dr. BAME Patience Penn Teneng

The editors of the Global Journal of Transformative Education  
wish to express our sorrow at the news of the death 

of one of our friends and contributors.  

Dr. Bame Patience Teneng Penn was  
a Senior Lecturer of Educational Administration  

at The University of Yaounde1 in Cameroon.

She passed away unexpectedly on March 5, 2022.

Her passion for education and her commitment to  
sharing her work with a global community will be missed.

43

Dr. Bame Patience Teneng Penn
1973-2022



Editorial Board. Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022), Vol 3 

Open Access

Global Journal of Transformative Education
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