Homes as transnational and translingual Sites: Pre-service teachers and refugee-background families read picturebooks

• In Event: Elevating Refugee-Background Communities’ Ways of Knowing, Doing, Being, and Becoming: Canadian and U.S. Perspectives

Abstract

In an increasingly transnational society – one that foregrounds interconnectedness and interdependence of nations, cultures, and people across geographical boundaries – it is imperative that pre-service teachers have opportunities to interact with refugee-background families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Pre-service teachers also gain valuable insights into students’ cultural backgrounds and lived experiences when they have opportunities to interact with children and youth in their homes and communities (Gagné et al., 2017; Levi, 2019). Further, when pre-service teachers participate in community-based learning designed courses at a private comprehensive university located in the Southeast United States, such as a children’s literature and arts integration and TESOL methods courses, they become connected to a community and foster new relationships, gain intercultural insights, and reconsider their assumptions about teaching (e.g., Brayko, 2013; Jagla & Tice, 2019; Janzen & Petersen, 2020). Specifically, this qualitative multiple case study (Stake, 2013) attends to the ways in which multilingual children, youth, and families from refugee backgrounds read and respond to picturebooks (e.g., Author 5, 2021), as well as the multimodal and translingual literacy practices that take place in homes and among families (e.g., Compton‐Lilly, Ellison, & Rogers, 2023; Compton-Lilly et al., 2022; New London Group, 1996; Perry, 2009, 2014; Paulick et al., 2022). Drawing on theoretical underpinnings that center transnationalism and translingualism, the following question guides this inquiry: Across five refugee-background families’ home sites, what happens when children, youth, their adult caregivers, and pre-service teachers interact with and respond to picturebooks that center multicultural, transnational, and translingual themes?

The shared reading sessions were audio recorded and pictures were taken of artifacts (e.g., drawings, arts and crafts, and pieces of writing) that the children, youth, their caregivers, and pre-service teachers produced in response to picturebooks. During the home visits, which took place one day per week, for one hour, during an academic semester or winter term, pre-service teachers and I engaged in spur-of-the-moment conversations (i.e., impromptu interviews) with children and their caregivers to learn about their backgrounds and lived experiences. In groups of four or five, pre-service teachers were paired with one family, whose home they visited every week during an academic semester. Additional data sources included the presenter’s research memos, which were written as reflective and reflexive notes, and pre-service teachers’ reflections, which they wrote after every visit with a family. In creating and sustaining relationships of care and dignity, children, youth, their adult caregivers, and pre-service teachers extended and reinvigorated languages, cultures, and stories. Specifically, these findings highlight themes of traversing borders, languages, and cultures, which were reflected through dialogic responses to and interactions with picturebooks, as well as drawings that children, youth, their adult caregivers, and pre-service teachers produced. Hence, when pre-service teachers have opportunities to learn with and from people from refugee backgrounds, remedy and repair looks, feels, and sounds like intentional practices, such as recognizing our humanity, learning collaboratively with communities, and advocating for unique needs (Author 5, 2024).

Author

• Nermin Vehabovic, Elon University