Transnational Parent Knowledge in Heritage Language Education: A Narrative Inquiry With Three Chinese Immigrant Mothers

• In Event: Leveraging Transnational Funds of Knowledge for More Equitable Education for Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Objectives
In today’s transnational and global society, more and more families have lived in plural locations, languages, and cultures where multiplicity, intersections, and contestations co-exist (Li et al., 2014). These transnational families, often families of color, are experiencing a translingual turn on language and literacy which calls for greater attention to their innovative linguistic practices. Much of the current literature focuses on bilingual children’s language and literacy development, but the role of immigrant parents in such a developmental process is often missing. Therefore, this presentation aims to bring forward how immigrant parents utilize their transnational knowledge daily, and support their children’s heritage language development through the family’s whole linguistic repertoire.

Perspectives
This presentation builds on three theoretical perspectives: transnationalism (Faist et al., 2013), translanguaging (García & Li, 2014), and parent knowledge (Pushor, 2015). Transnationalism helps to thoroughly understand how these parents engage in cross-cultural and cross-nation sociocultural, linguistic, and educational activities. The lens of translanguaging provides an effective tool to examine transnational families’ bi/multilingual language practices on their own terms. Finally, parent knowledge, which xxx, shifts the perspective of transnational parents from deficit-based to knowledge- and strength-based. This presentation aims to paint a vivid portrait of parents in transnational families by purposefully interweaving all three theoretical perspectives together.

Research Method
The methodological approach for my research is narrative inquiry which focuses on personal lives and how they are lived (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), as well as “the social, cultural and institutional narratives within which individuals’ experiences are constituted, shaped, expressed, and enacted” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 42). In engaging with and learning from parents from three immigrant families with young bi/multilingual children in Western Canada, I inquire into their transnational knowledge construction and enactment in regard to heritage language education. Data is gathered through recorded conversations and relevant artifacts.

Research Findings
Through telling, unpacking, and retelling stories of three immigrant families living in Canada, this presentation reveals that immigrant parents hold a rich wealth of transnational knowledge and play a significant role in bilingual children’s language development. The study further indicates that by employing a translingual language policy at home that embraces parents’ and children’s full linguistic capacities, parent-child communication increases in both dominant languages (i.e., English) and their heritage language. When immigrant parents see themselves as linguistic and cultural bridges to help their children connect to multiple words and worlds, children experience the autonomy of language use; hence, the power dynamic in the family also shifts toward a more balanced, two-way learning mode.

Significance of the study
By making visible transnational parent knowledge in their children’s heritage language development, this presentation points out ways in which schools can become more inviting and inclusive of transnational families, and incorporate these families' perspectives and experiences into language and literacy teaching and learning on and off school landscapes.

Author

• Emma Chen, University of Saskatchewan
  Presenting Author