Room 3.52, 6 Neville Alexander Building, Lover's Walk

Stream Head

MEd specialising in Language & Literacy Studies

Interests

My research and teaching focus on (colonial) ideologies of language and literacy, language in education policy, family multilingualism and bi/multilingual education in the Global South Having identified the dominance of Anglonormative ideologies in many educational spaces, I have a deep interest in how these can be challenged. I am an NRF B-rated scientist, recipient of the South African Women in Science Award (SAWISA) for Public Engagement with Research (2025) and a founding member of the bua-lit language and literacy collective advocating for the use of African languages and multilingualism in education (www.bua-lit.org.za).
 
Summary of interests: Language and Literacy as social practice; Ideologies of language and literacy; Bi/Multilingual education; ; Language in education policy; Language learning across the curriculum; Classroom discourse; Translanguaging and Languaging for learning; Critical literacy

Current & recent research projects

• 2022-2024 Languaging-for-Learning (Zenex funded project with M Probyn, R Tyler, M Hendricks, S Xeketwana, S Abdulatied & X Guzula)
• 2018 - 2021 Decoloniality and Language in Education: delinking and transforming languaging-for-learning (NRF funded project with Pam Christie, Cathy Kell, Matumo Ramafikeng, Soraya Abdulatief, Robyn Tyler, Xolisa Guzula and Pinky Makoe).
• 2017-2018 Co-PI (with Mbulu Madiba) Translanguaging as Pedagogy at UCT. Overcoming Barriers to University Education in South Africa (AHRC funded collaboration with UK PIs Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge, University of Birmingham).
• 2014 – 2017 ‘Heteroglossia in Primary Classrooms’ (NRF funded project)
• 2014 – 2016 Member of cross-institution research team, NRF Education Research Grant for project ‘Digital Resources in children’s and youth’s learning and networking’ (Mastin Prinsloo (PI), Ana Deumert, Marion Walton, Cathy Kell and Xolisa Guzula).

Current PhD supervision

• Candice Gerber (co-supervision with Prof A Hattingh and Dr K Angier)
• Jason du Plessis: Critical Genre pedagogy for pre-service English teachers: towards a multilingual framework for creative writing (co-supervision with Dr Soraya Abdulatief, UCT)
• Samkelo Matutu: Exploring the implementation of MTBbE in Grade 4-5 NST with a focus on language ideologies informing text production and assessment (co-supervision with Dr Xolisa Guzula)
• Teopolina Kanime: Family Language Policy in Multilingual families in an informal settlement in Namibia

Completed PhD students

• Hannah Carrim: Difficult work: History teachers’ experiences of teaching colonialism and apartheid in South African schools (Co-supervisor with Dr Kate Angier, UCT 2026)
• Babalwayashe Molate: Resisting dominant language and literacy ideologies through family multilingualism and the making of ikhaya (UCT 2025)
• Roslyn Fish: Ways of Seeing Women’s History: An action research study of student responses to a document-based lesson sequence centring Black women in a historical narrative (Co-supervisor with Dr Kate Angier, UCT 2025)
• Soraya Abdulatief: Expanding the repertoires of practice of multilingual Science student teachers through a decolonial approach to academic literacies at an elite English medium university (UCT 2022)
• Xolisa Guzula: Constructing a pedagogical third space with multilingual children: A case study of the bilingual Stars of Today Literacy Club# (UCT 2021)
• Beatha Set: Using semiotic resources to teach and assess scientific concepts in a bilingual Namibian primary school: A socio cultural discourse analysis’ (UCT 2021)
• Robyn Tyler:  Semiotic repertoires in bilingual Science learning: A study of learners’ meaning-making practices in two sites in a Cape Town high school (UCT)
• Elizabeth Botha: Discourses of language acquisition and identity in the life histories of White men bilingual in isiXhosa/English (UCT)
• Ana Ferreira: Subjectivity & Pedagogy in a context of social change (Wits)
• Tracey McCormick: Discourse & Politics in the Production of Homosexual Subjectivities in South Africa: a Discourse Analysis of selected English non-fiction texts (1994-2008) (Wits)

Publications

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carolyn-Mckinney
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1995-7238

Books

• McKinney, C., Makoe, P and Zavala, V. (Eds) 2024. The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. (2nd edition) London & New York: Routledge
• McKinney, C. and Christie, P.(Eds) 2022. Decoloniality, Language and Literacy: Conversations with teacher educators. Bristol: Multilingual Matters
• McKinney, C. 2017. Language and Power in Postcolonial Schooling: Ideologies in Practice.  New York: Routledge (Language, Culture and Teaching Series) 

Journal articles and book chapters

• Abdulatief, S. and McKinney, C., 2025. Working with teachers to disrupt Anglonormativity: a reflective account from the South. Language awareness, 34(3), pp.614-635.
• Makoe, P. and McKinney, C. 2025. Raciialising ideologies of language in post-apartheid schooling. In R. Kubota & S.Motha. Race, racism and anti-racism in language education. 76-98. Routledge
• McKinney, C. and Tyler, R., 2024. (Trans) languaging-for-learning: A perspective from the South. Reading & Writing-Journal of the Literacy Association of South Africa, 15(1), p.508.
• Tyler, R. and McKinney, C., 2024. Crossing the text frontier: Teachers resisting African language texts for learning. Reading & Writing, 15(1), pp.1-9.
• McKinney, C. 2024. Coloniality of language and pretextual gaps: A case study of emergent bilingual children’s writing in a South African school and a call for ukuzilanda. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 45(3) 663-679.
• McKinney, C and Norton, B. 2024. Identity, Language and Learning. In C. Leung & J. Lewkowicz (Eds). The Routledge Companion to English Studies, 2nd ed. Routledge.
• McKinney, C., Zavala, V. and Makoe, P. 2024. Introduction: Critical and decolonial approaches to multilingualism in global perspective. In McKinney, C., Makoe, P. and Zavala, V. (Eds). The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism 2nd Edition. Routledge.
• McKinney, C. and Set, B. 2024. Heteroglossic, multimodal classroom discourses and monolingual, monomodal assessment in Namibian primary Science teaching: a case study. In Reilly, C. Chimbutane, F. Clegg, J. Rubagumya, C. & Erling, E.J. (Eds). Multilingual Learning: Assessment, Ideologies and Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge.
• Molate, B. and McKinney, C. 2023. Resisting the coloniality of language through languaging and making of a multilingual ikhaya in South Africa. Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices 4(2) 201-222.
• McKinney, C. and Molate, B. 2022. Coloniality & Family Language Policy in an African Multilingual Family. In L.Wright & C. Higgins (Eds). Diversifying Family Language Policy. London: Bloomsbury.
• McKinney, C. 2022. Delinking from Coloniality and Increasing Participation in Early Literacy Teacher Education. In McKinney, C. and Christie, P. (Eds). Decoloniality, Language & Literacy: Conversations with Teacher Educators. (pp.155-172).Multilingual Matters.
• McKinney, C & Christie, P. 2022. Introduction: Conversations with Teacher Educators in Coloniality. In McKinney, C. and Christie, P. (Eds). Decoloniality, Language & Literacy: Conversations with Teacher Educators. (pp.1-20).Multilingual Matters.
• Janks, H. and McKinney, C., 2022. Critical Literacies in Post-Apartheid South Africa. In The Handbook of Critical Literacies (pp. 227-236). New York: Routledge.
• Abdulatief, S., Guzula, X., and McKinney, C. 2021. Delinking from Colonial Language Ideologies: Creating third spaces in teacher education. In Bock, Z. and Stroud, C. (Eds) Language and Decoloniality in Higher Education: Reclaiming Voices from the South.(pp.135-158). London: Bloomsbury.
• McKinney, C. 2020. Decoloniality and language in education: Transgressing language boundaries in South Africa. In J.Windle, D de Jesus and L.Bartlett (Eds). The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education: Social and Symbolic Boundaries in the Global South. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
• McKinney, C. and Tyler, R. (2019). Disinventing and reconstituting language for learning Science. Language and Education 33(2) 141-158.
• McKinney, C. 2018. Literacy in English: literacies in Englishes. In P. Seargeant., A.Hewings and S.Pihlaja. (Eds) Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies. London and New York: Routledge.
• McKinney, C. 2017. Language and Power in Postcolonial Schooling: Ideologies in Practice.  New York: Routledge (Language, Culture and Teaching Series)
• Christie, P. and McKinney, C. 2017. Decoloniality and ‘Model C’ schools: Ethos, Language and the Protests of 2016, Education as Change 21(3) https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2332
• Guzula, X., McKinney, C. & Tyler, R. 2016. Languaging-for-learning: legitimising translanguaging and enabling multimodal practices in third spaces. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 34 (211-226).
• McKinney, C with H.Carrim, A.Marshall and L.Layton. 2015. What counts as language in South African schooling? Monoglossic ideologies and children’s  participation. AILA Review 28 (103-126).
• Makoe, P and McKinney, C. 2014. Linguistic ideologies in multilingual South African suburban schools. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(7) DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2014.908889 (1-16).
• Makoe, P and McKinney, C. 2014. Linguistic ideologies in multilingual South African suburban schools. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(7) DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2014.908889 (1-16).
• McKinney, C. 2014. Moving between ekasi and the suburbs: the mobility of linguistic resources in a South African de(re)segregated school. In M.Prinsloo and C.Stroud. (Eds). Educating for Language and Literacy Diversity mobile selves. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Lillis, T and McKinney, C. 2013: The Sociolinguistics of Writing in a Global Context: Objects, lenses, consequences. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(4) Guest edited theme issue: Writing.
• McKinney, C. 2013: Orientations to English in post-apartheid schooling, English Today 29:1, 22-27.
• McKinney, C. 2011: Asymmetrical relations of knowing: pedagogy, discourse and identity in a de(re)segregated school, Journal of Education 51 (29-51).
• McKinney, C. 2010: Schooling in black and white: Assimilationist discourses and subversive identity performances in a desegregated South African girls’ school. Race, Ethnicity & Education 13:2 (191-207).
• Makoe, P and McKinney, C. 2009: Hybrid discursive practices in a South African multilingual primary classroom: A case study. English Teaching Practice and Critique 8:2 (80-95).
• McKinney, C and Norton, B. 2008: Identity in Language and Literacy education, F.Hult and B.Spolsky (eds) Blackwell Handbook of Educational Linguistics, Blackwells
• McKinney, C. 2008: Uncomfortable positionings: Critical literacy and identity in a post-apartheid university classroom. In: Cooper, K. and White, R. E. (eds). Critical Literacies in Action: Social Perspectives and Teaching Practice. The Netherlands: Sense Publications (Transgressions series, edited by S. Steinberg and J. Kincheloe).
• McKinney, C. 2007: Caught between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’? Talking about ‘race’ in a post-apartheid university classroom, Race, Ethnicity and Education 10:2
• McKinney, C. 2007: ‘If I speak English does it make me less black anyway?’ ‘Race’ and English in South African desegregated schools, English Academy Review 24:2
• McKinney, C. 2005: A Balancing Act: Ethical Dilemmas of Democratic teaching within Critical Pedagogy Educational Action Research 12:3 pp375-391
• McKinney, C and van Pletzen, E. 2004: ‘this apartheid story . . . we’ve decided it’s gone we’ve finished with it’: student responses to ‘politics’ in a South African English Studies course, Teaching in Higher Education, 9:2, Carfax
• McKinney, C. 2004: ‘A little hard piece of grass in your shoe’: understanding student resistance to critical literacy in post-apartheid South Africa, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 22: 1&2
• McKinney, C. 2005: Textbooks for diverse learners? A critical analysis of Learning Support Materials in South Africa HSRC Press, Cape Town. (downloadable from HSRC press)
• M. Nkomo, C. McKinney & L.Chisholm (Eds) 2004: Reflections on School Integration Colloquium Proceedings HSRC Press, Cape Town. (downloadable from HSRC press)
• Lillis, T. and McKinney, C. 2003: Analysing language in context, Trentham Books: Stoke on Trent, England
• McKinney, C. and Swann, J. 2001: “Developing a sociolinguistic voice? Students and linguistic descriptivism”, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5:4, pp.576-590 Blackwells.