Crossing the text frontier: Teachers resisting African language texts for learning

Background: Scholars have identified the benefits of using African languages and bilingual approaches in South African education; at the same time, the dominance of language ideologies and systemic constraints work against the full implementation of bilingual education. Objectives: This article tracks the early responses of the pre-service and in-service teachers in two intervention projects to the bi/multilingual pedagogies presented to them and their uptake in their pedagogy. Method: The study probes the responses of teachers who were comfortable with African language use in oral activities but did not yet take this up in reading and writing activities. Data from two focus group interviews in two research projects are analysed using critical discourse analysis. Results: The use of African languages in written form posed a frontier yet to be breached by these teachers in their classroom practices. Conclusion: We argue that the dominant, entangled reasons for what we call the ‘text frontier’ in bilingual learning in South Africa are the following: the coloniality of literacy, linked to colonial language ideologies which position African languages as deficient vehicles of academic pursuit; the lack of bilingual learning materials; teachers’ own experience with using African language texts in their education; and the pressure of monolingual standardised systemic assessments. Contribution: Our work contributes to an understanding of how language and literacy ideologies impact pedagogy. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of the text frontier for the use of African languages in education.