There is often a disconnect between the dominant language of the classroom and the home language of South African learners. Consequently, this may lead to dehumanising experiences in classrooms. This article explores the possibilities of using translanguaging to bring about humanising experiences for learners and teachers. Translanguaging is a means of providing planned and systematic use of the home language of learners with the language of the classroom in order to foster learning and teaching. A poetic inquiry is used to explore and make meaning of my understanding of what I observe in multilingual classroom contexts. Poetry and photography are used as data to support an argument for using translanguaging as a pedagogic tool to enable teaching and learning. Researcher-voiced poems (vox autobiographia) and literature-voiced poems (vox theoria) are employed to encapsulate understandings of the complexities and possibilities of teaching in multilingual classrooms. This inquiry reveals that translanguaging practices allow for fluid movement between the home and school language. Instead of being dehumanised by traditional language practices, teachers and learners are encouraged to bring their languages to the classroom. In so doing, they are able to experience being human as social, thinking, transforming, individuals participating with others in the world they inhabit together.

Craft- and arts-based procedures, as examples of aesthetic communication, have the potential to inspire new ways of being and doing in the context of student support activities in higher education environments. In this article, we share our experiences of using craftwork and arts-infused activities to examine our practice. In our research undertaking, we collaborated creatively in order to scrutinise and question our taken-for-granted and usual student support practices. The purpose of our inquiry was to engage with specific craft- and arts-based procedures in order to discover how transformation of practice, prompted by creative activism, could be realised. To achieve this, we developed an innovative, Crafting Connections, procedure. This hands-on technique adds to the creative repertoire available to scholars and practitioners. Material sense making employing this craftwork process and arts-based activities facilitated the exploration of student support practices. Using visual activism and a transformative activist stance as theoretical perspectives, images, crafted artefacts, and collage work were scrutinised. This positioned us to make an argument for the coalescing of understanding and prompting of transformed practice informed by creative action and insight. Through craft- and arts-based practitioner inquiry activities, we gained insights regarding ways of creating a transformative learning space for students and staff to grow towards their goals and realise their intentions in a mutually beneficial manner. Our reflections further revealed that it is essential for staff to balance nurturing with respect for agency as a key action in the student support process.

By using activities such as visual participatory methodologies, pre-service teachers and university staff members are able to explore and extend their ideas of what it means to be a teacher. In this research project, I sought to prompt a visual dialogue between students and staff. The distance provided when using creative enquiry procedures such as photo-voice, collage, and drawing allows participants, as members of a teaching community, to detach from their assumptions and view themselves, knowledge, and meaning making in more subtle ways. The aim of this creative participatory study was to explore dialogic engagement concerning the learning-to-teach journey of Bachelor of Education (B Ed) students at a South African university. The visual-based interaction of student teachers and staff is revealed, and the movements towards the goal of teacherness laid bare. I make an argument for the use of visual and creative approaches as a means of collaboratively bridging complicated and difficult territory, moving beyond boundaries to spaces of creative action. An account of the potential of artful portrayals as both disruptive and coalescing devices is a key contribution of this enquiry.