"Soy de Abrazos": Children's Explorations of Bicultural Identity Through Multimodal Art

• In Event: 25.086 - Sheraton Roundtable Session One - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 25.086-3 - Activism, Art Integration, and Multiplicity: Methodological and Strategic Implementation of Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

In this era of ‘post-truth,’ it becomes increasingly crucial for researchers to employ multi-modal narratives to support the democratization of evidence that capitalizes upon the perspectives of diverse participants. This paper examines the use of participant-generated multimodal identity artwork to investigate children’s bicultural identity development. This unique project represents a collaboration between a local teaching artist, a researcher at a public university, and a classroom of second graders at dual-language school, demonstrating the value of art within studies of identity and the value of supporting children in the analysis of their own identity artwork through participatory visual discourse analysis. I discuss this method within the larger field of identity research and the process of participatory visual discourse analysis.

Author

• Rhianna Henry Casesa, Sonoma State University