Language, Culture, and Belonging: Transformative Practices and Innovation in Global Multilingual Education

Article summary submission deadline: May 31, 2026Full manuscript submission deadline: November 7, 2026In an era marked by widening linguistic inequality, intensified global mobility, and the continued marginalization of linguistically diverse communities - including Indigenous language communities - educational policies and practices across many contexts remain grounded in monolingual, deficit-oriented, and historically colonial frameworks. Such approaches frequently centre dominant language norms while overlooking the lived linguistic, cultural, and social realities of multilingual learners. As a result, language and cultural belonging - central to how students experience schooling, construct identities, and access educational opportunities - are often positioned at the margins of pedagogy, assessment, and policy.This Research Topic seeks to foreground language, culture, and belonging as critical sites of innovation, transformation, and inclusion in education systems worldwide. It brings together scholarship that examines how power operates through language in schools and how educators, families, communities, and immigrant-origin youth are actively reshaping educational spaces toward greater equity and justice. Emphasizing a “sound science” approach, this collection invites empirically grounded, theoretically robust, and practice-informed contributions that move beyond critique to illuminate innovative responses to persistent structural inequities.Innovation is understood broadly to include pedagogical, curricular, policy-based, community-driven, and methodological approaches that challenge inherited monolingual and exclusionary paradigms. The Research Topic highlights initiatives that centre multilingualism - including Indigenous multilingualism - as an asset, affirm learners’ full linguistic and cultural repertoires, and foster educational environments where belonging, wellbeing, and agency are possible for all learners.We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:- Inclusive and culturally sustaining pedagogies that promote belonging, equity, and linguistic justice in multilingual and multicultural settings, including hybrid and digital learning environments.- Language, identity, and agency in education, with attention to how language practices shape learner and teacher identities, academic trajectories, and access to social and cultural capital.- Curriculum innovation, including translanguaging pedagogies, decolonial approaches, Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation in educational contexts, community-engaged models, and instructional designs that honour linguistic and cultural diversity while supporting academic rigor.- Educational policy analyses examining how institutional, national, and transnational frameworks influence language inclusion, bilingual education, Indigenous language education, teacher preparation, and equity-oriented reforms.- Equity, wellbeing, and workforce issues, including research on representation, discrimination, teacher wellbeing, and the experiences of multilingual educators and immigrant-origin communities.This Research Topic invites contributions from scholars, practitioners, teacher educators, policymakers, and community partners across global contexts. Submissions may include empirical studies, conceptual and theoretical papers, program evaluations, qualitative and participatory research, case studies, and comparative analyses that advance transformative multilingual education. Topic editors: Karla Lomeli, Eduardo R Munoz-Munoz, Rosa D. Chávez Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78020/language-culture-and-belonging-transformative-practices-and-innovation-in-global-multilingual-education