Rightful Parental Presence and Translanguaging: A Pathway to Equity and Consequential Learning in STEM for Multilingual Learners

• In Event: Research on the Move: Consequential Research Examining Caregiver and Family Communities

Abstract

This study investigates instructional practices that support rightful familial presence and translanguaging practices in English-dominant STEM classrooms to address racial/class inequities in STEM learning. Using participatory critical design ethnographic methods, we collaborated with a teacher, and four 6th-grade classrooms of immigrant, multilingual students and mothers to adapt and implement a STEM curriculum focused on engineering for sustainable communities. Findings reveal how activity structures and translanguaging tools facilitated teacher-mothers collaboration, incubating new epistemologies. These epistemologies manifested in legitimate STEM discourse threads that centered familial perspectives on community sustainability and engineering design, making students’/families' lives rightfully present. We argue that recognizing immigrant parents’ community cultural wealth is insufficient; it is imperative to activate it into STEM-related capital to transform systemic injustices.

Authors

• Wisam Sedawi, University of Michigan

• Angela Calabrese, University of Michigan