Linguistically Responsive Research With Multilingual Immigrant Children Through Employing Child-Centered Interview Activities

• In Event: Mobilizing Literacy While Living in the Margins: Writing, Talking, and Reading the World

Abstract

This paper considers researching young immigrant children whose everyday lives include the mobility of languages, cultures, and countries in linguistically responsive ways. The author engaged multilingual children in child-centered interview activities Drawing on the reflections and experiences of engaging multilingual children in child-centered interview activities (e.g., photographs, drawing, and mind-mapping) and a reflective journal, the author emphasizes the importance of conducting interviews that build on children’s multilingual repertoires, value their multiple and multimodal forms of representation and communication, and honor the children’s voices and agency over research agendas.

Author

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University