(Un)Realized Gains of Teaching Heritage Language Learners: Community-Based Heritage Language School Teachers' Invisible Investment (Poster 11)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Seven
  In Poster Session: Critical Perspectives: Leveraging the Influence of Languages in Multilingual Contexts

Abstract

This qualitative study aimed to examine community-based Korean heritage language school teachers’ investment in supporting their children’s heritage language and literacy learning. Conceptually, this study is situated in the New Literacy Studies, the concept of language teacher Investment, and human capital theory. Interviews with twenty-one teachers of community-based Korean heritage language schools demonstrated that teachers invested their funds of knowledge accumulated through their transnational experiences into heritage language teaching. Their investment was materialized in various forms of capital that allowed them and their students to develop agency while enriching community members’ human capital and eventually strengthening ethnolinguistic vitality. This study confirms the benefits and importance of ethnolinguistic minority communities’ participation in heritage language literacy practices.

Author

• Kwangok Song, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author