Multilingual Pedagogic Innovation for Epistemic Inclusion: Making education meaningful

Meaningful education is epistemically inclusive in three senses. First, all learners are included in meaning-making processes in the classroom. Second, it recognizes and engages with the culture, language, and forms of knowledge that are meaningful to learners and their communities. Third, it is meaningful for society as it contributes towards creating new concepts and knowledge practices for articulating and addressing individual, social and environmental injustices. Language is central to all three forms of epistemic inclusion. Hence, the nature of pedagogic innovation for inclusion is discussed through the example of multilingual pedagogy that was developed in Tanzania but only went to scale in limited ways. Research that opens up a conversation between multilingual education in Tanzania and Seychelles can deepen the practice and theory of pedagogic innovation for epistemic inclusion. This is due, in part, to the small size of the Seychelles education system and its international teaching workforce. More important, however, is its Creole culture, which is continuously creative of new reparative forms of indigeneity.