Multimodal Translanguaging Pedagogy in an Early Childhood Korean Heritage Language Classroom

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Two
  In Roundtable Session: Early Childhood Education: Access, Pedagogy, Leadership, and Family Support (Table 3)

Abstract

Home language shifts and losses are pervasive among children from linguistic minority families in the USA. Drawing on this backdrop, this study attempted to create sustainable and equal heritage language education for young heritage bilingual children, as a way of supporting the development of dynamic bilingualism. Specifically, this study aims to reveal how a multimodal translanguaging instructional approach in an early childhood heritage language classroom can influence children's dynamic bilingual development. Based on the Teacher Research method, multimodal translanguaging pedagogies were devised and used to provide dynamic bilingual experiences to second-generation Korean immigrant children in an early childhood classroom at a Korean Heritage Language School in the southeastern United States. The findings of this study report how the teacher fostered a multimodal translanguaging approach in an early childhood heritage language classroom and how young children navigated their dynamic bilingual identities in a classroom with a multimodal translanguaging instructional approach.

Author

• Kyungjin Hwang, University of South Carolina
  Presenting Author