The Emergence of transnational awareness among children in immigrant families

Abstract

In the past, physical barriers such as geography and distance limited global communication. In this paper, we explore how young children in immigrant families engage in transnational literacy practices. Specifically, we explore the transnational funds of knowledge that result from those experiences. This three-year longitudinal collective case study involves ten children from immigrant families who have come to the United States from around the world. The students entered the study in four-year-old kindergarten, grade 1 or grade 2. Each year, we collected observations, spoken data and studentcreated artefacts (e.g. writing samples, maps, photographs). Data sources were designed to highlight the various spaces that the immigrant families occupy or have occupied over time (i.e. home/neighbourhood/ school; native country/country of residence). Our reading and rereading of coded data across the sample led us to focus on families' digital transnational practices and children's transnational awareness. We argue that these funds of knowledge should be recognized in classrooms and schools and that they have the potential to contribute to the nurturing of cosmopolitan perspectives for all children.

“I Need Child Care!”: Using Funds of Knowledge, Addressing Challenges, and Developing Literacies With a Classroom Community of Adult ESL Learners

“…Because these types of knowledge are somewhat different from those experienced by children, researchers need to consider expanding and refining funds of knowledge frameworks when studying adult ESL classes to account for the life experiences of adult learners. Likewise, even though there are a growing number of studies related to helping immigrant and refugee children and adolescents to develop literacies (Compton-Lilly, Kim, Quast, Tran, & Shedrow, 2019;Perry, 2007Perry, , 2009Purcell-Gates, 2007), there are significantly fewer studies investigating how adult ESL learners develop literacies through lenses of literacy as a social practice. How to help immigrant and refugee adult learners to develop literacies by drawing upon funds of knowledge and literacies as social practices remains an important question for future research.…”

The Circulation of Care in Multilingual and Transnational Children

“…It departs from the binaries of home/host and old/new countries and instead focuses on those whose lives encompass multiple cultures and countries and engage through hybrid and dialogic cultural and geographic boundaries (Gardner, 2012; Lam & Warriner, 2012). When considering immigrant children’s social worlds through a transnational lens, the multiple and dynamic ways immigrant children and their families engage in language and literacy engagements that cross nation-states becomes important (Compton-Lilly et al, 2019a). With the transnational framework, I take the perspective that children’s plural and dynamic language and literacy experiences are closely tied to the social and cultural contexts in which they engage (Street, 1984).…”

“…During these transnational practices, immigrant children engage in complex multilingual and transnational literacies that reflect their mobility (Ghiso, 2016; Kwon et al, 2019; Martínez-Álvarez & Ghiso, 2017; Orellana, 2016). They expand their linguistic and cultural repertoires and naturally learn to draw on and manage their multilingual resources and transnational funds of knowledge to build social contacts and navigating multiple settings (Compton-Lilly et al, 2019a; Kwon et al, 2019; Levitt, 2009).…”

What We Must Learn From Children in Immigrant Families

“…Our collective longitudinal case study (Compton‐Lilly, Kim, Quast, Tran, & Shedrow, ; Compton‐Lilly, Papoi, Venegas, Hamman, & Schwabenbauer, ), which involves nine children from immigrant families, is ongoing. Our families have immigrated to the northern Midwestern United States from China, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, and Nepal.…”