An Introduction to the Symposium

• In Event: Literacy, Identity, and Learning: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study With Immigrant Families

Abstract

Purpose: This symposium documents and examines long term processes related to literacy development and identity construction for immigrant children over a three-year period. While short term studies reveal insights related to the challenges immigrant children and families face, little is known about their longitudinal trajectories. We share three cases from a larger collective case study project. Papers address pop culture and media identities, home/school tensions, and the intersectionalities among multiple dimensions of identity including religion, nationality, and culture.
Literature Review: A few quantitative researchers with interests in immigrant students have used qualitative methods to explain longitudinal patterns gleaned from quantitative data collected over long periods of time (Reese, Garnier, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 2000; Feliciano & Rumbaut, 2005). Other researchers have conducted qualitative longitudinal studies (Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003; Moje, Ciechanowski, Ellis, Rosario, & Collazo, 2004; Reese, Kroesen, & Gallimore, 2000; Ek, 2009) to explore translation as a language practice, document the knowledge immigrant students bring to classrooms, describe youth enacted agency, and track individuals across time. Fuligni (2001) argued that longitudinal qualitative studies are particularly important for understanding the experiences of immigrant children “as they encounter and negotiate differences between their cultural traditions and those of the host society” (pp. 567–568). While researchers have used longitudinal and qualitative methods to document the strengths and experiences of bilingual students , they have not tracked students’ school trajectories or revealed the ways literacy and language learning, identity formation, and factors intersect in the lives of children across time.
Data Sources: Three types of data were collected: observations, spoken data, and artifacts. Data sources have been identified to reference various spaces that the immigrant families occupy or have occupied (i.e., home/neighborhood/school; native country/country of residence) and various points in time (past, present, future). Because the same types of data were collected across the research project, change and continuity across time were observed. Data included observations of children at home and school, parent/student/family member interviews, student-created artifacts (e.g., drawings, photographs), and conversations about these artifacts.

Methods and Techniques: In this study, discourse analysis alongside coding based on a prior and grounded categories related to literacy and identity were conducted to explore children’s experiences relative to literacy, identity and schooling over long periods of time. Specifically, semi-structured interviews were analyzed using a temporal/spatial discourse analysis focused on the ways participants used language to situate themselves within time (i.e., “now,” “then,” “before,” “after”) and space (i.e., “here,” “there,” “home,” “school”, “far away”). Parallel artifacts collected across time were analyzed to document change over time as well as identity construction and literacy learning.

Significance: Rather than treating identity construction as a singular construct, together these papers revealed the complexity and the multidimensionality of identity construction across time and space. By attending to particular dimensions of identity – pop culture, heritage culture, home language, self perception, and the concerted interests of parents, these case studies begin to reveal “prismatic” (Modjeska, 2000, p. 7) influences that operate in the construction of identities for young children.

Author

• Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of Wisconsin - Madison