Temporal Dimensions of a Biracial Child's Identity Construction

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-1 - Conceptualizing Time: The Case of Immigrant Students

Abstract

This paper investigates temporal dimensions of a biracial child’s identity construction by exploring the eight teachers’ perceptions of one child from an immigrant family. It explores how the perceptions of teachers across time play a part in the construction of a biracial child’s identity. This paper invites scholars to rethink temporality by reminding us that the past and future not only exist in the forms of memory or imagination, but they are processes fully implicated in the present (Williams, 2011).
Theoretical Framework: While children demonstrate their temporal understandings of language and literacy in the process of identity construction, teachers position the children within certain categories based on students’ behaviors in classrooms (Minor, 2014; Karabenick & Noda, 2004). Referencing Deleuze’s and Guattari’s (1987) treatment of time, this paper draws on a conception of temporality as more than a container for processes and events. Instead, time is understood as an “e-merging” of events as contributing to how a focal child, Liz, and her teachers in grades 1 through 5 projected particular meanings of self while revisiting the past and envisioning the future as they engaged with the present.
Methods and Data Sources: This case study involves one biracial child (Caucasian father and Korean mother) from an immigrant family and the eight teachers at a Midwest elementary school. Transcripts of child and teacher interviews; home, community, and classroom observation; field notes; Liz’s self-portraits and drawing/writing samples are analyzed. We used temporal discourse analysis to analyze meanings across time providing insight into how the teachers and the child make sense of Liz across time and within time. We attended to the temporal language (e.g., “today,” “last month,” “when I taught. . .,” “when I played with my friends”) and examined how Liz positioned herself and was positioned by her teachers within particular literacy events to explore temporal dimensions of Liz’s identity construction.
Findings: While Liz engaged in dynamic negotiations of identity construction over time (i.e., identifying herself with Korean flags, an American map, her Korean American friends), her teachers’ engaged with a narrower and more limited set of dimensions related to school practices and future expectations. Specifically, Liz’s teachers expected her bilingual ability to be beneficial in the future without recognizing the significance of Liz’ bilingual abilities in her present learning in and out of school. They located Liz and her possible selves within the institution of school. This resulted in the imposition of judgments drawn from their past experiences with biracial and Asian students. Teachers brought their pre-constructed meaning while engaging particular futures and pasts into the present to craft their own storylines of Liz’s literate abilities, assumed identities, and her potential as a learner.
Academic Significance: This study explores the non-linear nature of identity construction for a biracial child by providing empirical evidence that the past and the future operate in the present.

Authors

• Sun Young Lee, Weber State University

• Jieun Kim, University of Wisconsin - Madison