Designing Equitable Learning Spaces for Immigrant Children Through Transnational and Translanguaging Pedagogies

• In Event: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Literacies Through Translingual Practices and Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose and Framing
Research shows that U.S. K-12 schools historically and continuously marginalize and erase the voices, experiences, and knowledge of children from marginalized backgrounds (An, 2022), as monolingual ideologies, English hegemony, and a white, U.S.-centric curriculum remain dominant (García & Kleifgen, 2018). This is especially evident today, as anti-immigrant rhetoric and racism are increasingly intensified and even normalized by the U.S. political leaders and media. As a result, immigrant children are often positioned as "children at risk" or "culturally deprived" (Nieto, 2013). Their funds of knowledge—including the flexible and dynamic ways in which they leverage their full linguistic repertoires, often referred to as translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014)—are frequently viewed through defective perspectives.
This study addresses the urgent need to recognize and integrate immigrant children’s lived experiences, linguistic and cultural assets, and funds of knowledge into literacy education by creating an equitable learning space that affirms their linguistic and cultural assets. The study is based on an after-school literacy initiative conducted between 2023 and 2024. In collaboration with teachers and researchers from immigrant backgrounds, we designed and implemented an after-school initiative that foregrounds the students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and encourages children to leverage their full linguistic repertoires through translanguaging pedagogy (García et al., 2017). Within this space, children also interacted with literacy materials and emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR) to engage in multimodal storytelling opportunities and to visit countries and contexts outside of the U.S that hold significance, thus fostering transnational literacies (Skerrett, 2015).

Methods of Data Collection and Analysis
The study was conducted at a local public library and involved 6 children of Asian heritage from immigrant families (Grades 2-3) in Michigan. The program was facilitated by an Asian American teacher who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and English. Employing an ethnographic case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005), I collected a range of ethnographic data including participant observations, fieldnotes, in-depth interviews, child-generated VR artifacts, and written and multimodal documents. Drawing on the action-reflection cycle (McNiff & Whitehead, 2011), I engaged in a cyclical process of continuous observation, reflection, action, and adaptation. This approach allowed me to observe the children’s experiences, reflect on them, and revise the curriculum. The data analysis process followed four stages using MAXQDA : (a) organizing, reducing, and familiarizing data, (b) coding data, (c) generating initial themes, and (d) developing and finalizing themes.

Findings and Importance
Findings showed that creating a learning space that foregrounds the children’s linguistic and cultural assets, transnational knowledge, and stories allowed them to: 1) explore and represent their intersectional identities through multimodal and multilingual forms, 2) enact their agency as they shared their stories through written and multimodal means, and 3) produce multimodal and multilingual stories that challenge stereotypical portrayals of immigrant children. The study underscores the importance of designing and implementing learning spaces that validate and affirm immigrant children’s linguistic repertoires and lived experiences through translanguaging pedagogy.

Author

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University