Teaching Civil Rights and Responsibilities to Bilingual Kindergarteners through the Home-School Connection

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 11:45 am
  In Poster Session: Constructing Early Childhood Education: Ideologies, Influences, and Discourses

Abstract

Despite the increasing emphasis on social studies in Early Childhood Education, there has been a
serious paucity of empirical studies on how bilingual children develop their emergent understanding on their rights and responsibilities. The main purpose of this article is to share empirical episodes of kindergarten-age children of Korean descent engaging in authentic conversations about civil rights and responsibilities with their teachers, peers, and mothers. The data were collected by video/audio recordings, open-ended interviews, and children’s artifacts over a period of three months. The findings suggest the potential of bilingual discussions about dual citizenship as a means to help young bilinguals develop their emergent understandings of their rights and responsibilities as young dual citizens.

Author

• So Jung Kim, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa