"That's My Mission": Examining Parents' Investments in Their Emergent Bilingual Learners' Development

• In Event: Understanding and Valuing Immigrant Parents' Experiences, Knowledge, and Perspectives in Language Education

Abstract

Using a sociocultural perspective, this qualitative case study involved working with families with children in a PK-3rd grade dual-language school. Parents attended after-school workshops to explore topics and strategies that advanced bilingualism, biliteracy, cross-cultural communication, global literature, and global awareness. We focus on data from six family interviews that occurred near the end of Year 1 of a 2-year project. Findings show that parents seemed to improvise and reframe spaces in their home lives that created new cultural worlds for their children. There were three appropriations of investment (Norton 2013) that seemed to underline parents’ decisions: 1) Investment in a more diverse future, 2) Investment in increasing their children’s self-efficacy, and 3) Investment in their own linguistic and cultural capital.

Authors

• Lenny Sanchez, University of South Carolina - Columbia

• Yang Wang, University of South Carolina - Columbia

• Eurydice B. Bauer, University of South Carolina

• Wenyu Guo, University of South Carolina

• Kyungjin Hwang, University of South Carolina - Columbia

• Ling Hao, University of South Carolina