ERIC Number: EJ1382964
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Jun
Pages: 27
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1463-9491
Transforming a Cemetery into a Garden of Languages: A Justice-Oriented, Family-Centered Framework for Cultivating Early Bilingualism and Emergent Biliteracy
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, v24 n2 p97-123 Jun 2023
One in three children enrolled in US early childhood programs is a dual language learner. While dual language learners have been the target of sweeping educational reforms under the guise of justice, these reforms--which pathologize dual language learners as problems to be remediated rather than assets to be developed--have largely ignored the priorities and experiences of young multilingual learners and their families. This historical omission of centering dual language learners in research, policy, and practice is unjust and has contributed to marginalization, homogenization, and linguistic erasure. Asian Americans, the second-largest group of dual language learners and the fastest-growing racial group in the USA, have remained an underexplored group of emergent bilinguals across early childhood research, practice, and policy. Thus, this article draws on the multilingual expertise of Asian American families of young dual language learners to portray how parents construct and navigate multiple knowledges, beliefs, and pedagogies of cultivating their children's dual language and literacy development. The key findings present a justice-centered framework that conceptualizes three cultivating practices across diverse spaces, borders, and time. Counterstories of planting, pollinating, and pruning position Asian immigrant parents as agentic gardeners of bilingualism and biliteracy, and interrogate the deficit paradigms that are too often placed on dual language learners to fit the narrow, monocultural, and monolingual definitions of school readiness. Centering Asian American families in generating theory and future research directions, this article envisions the future potentiality of early childhood education in pursuit of equity and transformative justice.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Emergent Literacy, Educational Change, Early Childhood Education, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, English Language Learners, Preschool Children, Justice, Multilingualism, Disadvantaged, Asian Americans, Educational Practices, Educational Policy, Parent Child Relationship, Parent Attitudes, Language Usage, Native Language, Teaching Methods, Immigrants, Equal Education, Social Change, Bilingual Education, Metropolitan Areas, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, Korean, Chinese, Heritage Education, Native Language Instruction, Language Acquisition, Language Maintenance
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A