Taking Bicultural Parental Engagement Online: Exploring Digital Resources for Home-School Communication, Translation, and Biliteracy Development

• In Event: Leveraging Home-Language Literacies in the Education of Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Drawing from critical, ethnographic and participatory perspectives to bicultural parental engagement, this study examines three related factors shaping parents’ access and engagement with digital content related to biliteracy development. In the context of a technology school-based program, the following practices were analyzed: (a) parents’ reported language choice practices in the use of devices; (b) affordances and constraints of online translators to access school communication; and (c) parents’ discussion and responses to online resources related to the literacy/biliteracy development of elementary school children. Implications of the critical examination of web-based home-school communication with multilingual families are discussed.

Author

• Silvia Cecilia Nogueron-Liu, University of Georgia