Recognizing Emergent Bilingual Parent-Child Dyads’ Funds of Identity through Their Discussions about Culturally Relevant Text

ABSTRACT

The goals of this paper were to: (a) recognize the funds of identity that five emergent bilingual mother-child dyads express while making personal connections to culturally relevant books, (b) identify whether each dyad’s responses were convergent or divergent, and (c) explore how these discussions expanded participants’ views of one another or affirmed their shared identities. Each dyad video-recorded 9 book discussions (45 total). Then, each participant was interviewed. These data were coded using a combination of a priori and emergent coding, and frequency was counted for categories of coding. Findings show that culturally relevant books: (a) can be used as tools to recognize all categories of parents’ and children’s funds of identity, (b) served as tools to allow for comparison of how dyads’ funds of identity converged or diverged, and (c) resulted in parents and children expanding their views of one another and affirming their shared identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Culturally relevant text
• emergent bilingual
• English learner
• family literacy
• funds of identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Education Research Service Projects Program of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). https://www.aera.net/Education-Research/Education-Research-Service-Projects/Awardees

Notes on contributors

Hyonsuk Cho

Hyonsuk Cho is an Assistant Professor of TESOL at the University of North Dakota. Her research focuses on emergent bilingual students’ language, academic, and social-emotional development, family engagement, and culturally sustaining pedagogies.

Tanya Christ

Tanya Christ is a Professor of Reading and Language Arts at Oakland University. Her research focuses on early childhood vocabulary, comprehension, and digital literacies learning; issues of educational access and equity; and teacher education.

Yu Liu

Yu Liu is a Lecturer of Chinese Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University. His research focuses on emergent bilingual instruction, second language acquisition, L2 learning motivation, digital literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical reading modes in L2, and university-community partnerships.