Making multilingual students’ analytical thinking visible

A Year 10 English language learner's spider web drawing, captioned ‘the movies can learn in different ways’, illustrates the complexity of multilingual learning. This research examines how multilingual students use visual–spatial thinking as legitimate analytical work through a partnership between university researchers and a secondary school teacher with Year 10 students in an Australian school. Using emotive mapping, drama-based pedagogy and rich multimodal texts within curriculum requirements, the methodology employed Critical Visual Discourse Analysis, Cummins’ transformative pedagogy framework and Jessner's metalinguistic awareness theory to analyse three focal students’ multimodal texts.The findings show students’ analytical and metacognitive capabilities were already present but became educationally recognised through Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy (ARTP). Students developed connecting capabilities, linking different analytical thinking modes with academic discourse structures valued by schools. The multimodal, translanguaging approach revealed capabilities that traditional assessment structures privileging linguistic articulation in English systematically overlook. Teacher reflections reveal that transformation remained partial within institutional constraints, including limited understanding of how different analytical thinking modes connect across languages. The research demonstrates how visual–spatial pedagogies make multilingual students’ sophisticated thinking visible, while highlighting persistent challenges in educational systems recognising and building upon these capabilities.