Negotiating Identity in a Translanguaging Learning Space: A Case Study of Young Chinese American Children

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Identity, Culture and Sustaining Language

Abstract

This qualitative case study investigates young Chinese American children’s identity negotiation in a community-based Chinese literacy class. Drawing on translanguaging and investment theories, the study analyzes classroom interactions, interviews, and students’ artifacts to examine how children navigate language ideologies, power relations, and desires for belonging through strategic use of their linguistic, semiotic, and cultural repertoire. Findings reveal tensions between monolingual norms and children's translanguaging realities, as well as the complex role of parental scaffolding in shaping the negotiation process. It also suggests that rather than passive learners, children enacted agency through embodied meaning-making and affective investments.

Author

• Zhen Valerie Ren, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign