Emma Chen on Immigrant Parent Knowledge and Heritage Language Education
Today I am delighted to highlight the work of one of my phenomenal graduate students, Emma Chen.
Emma is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, engaged in a narrative inquiry into immigrant children’s heritage language education, in the context of home, community, and school. Originally from China, Emma is an immigrant parent to two young bilingual children who speak both English and Mandarin-Chinese. Every day, Emma walks alongside her little girls exploring the wonderful (and sometimes challenging) worlds of language and culture.
Last week, Emma presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference which is held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The theme of this year’s conference was “Applied Linguistics in Times of Reckoning and Change.”
Emma presented her paper: Immigrant Parent Knowledge and Heritage Language Education
Here is an overview of the paper, written by Emma:
The maintenance and sustainability of heritage language are essential to immigrant children’s linguistic, cultural, and social development. While there is a large body of literature on heritage language, immigrant parents’ role in their children’s heritage language education remains largely unknown.
This paper conceptualizes immigrant parent knowledge while demonstrating how it is carried out in heritage language education in the home context. With narrative inquiry methodology, data are collected through in-depth conversations between the researcher and the parents from three Chinese immigrant families in the City of Saskatoon, Canada. The reader is invited into immigrant families’ home settings and witness their efforts, challenges, and rewards in the heritage language learning journey. The author summarizes two aspects of immigrant parent knowledge: (1) knowledge of identity, including transnational experience, culture, and religion; and (2) knowledge of language which includes knowledge of heritage language knowledge, English, bilingualism, and translanguaging. Unique characteristics are brought to bear on the concept of immigrant parent knowledge, followed by describing how such knowledge can be enacted in immigrant children’s heritage language education.
This paper provides theoretical foundations for educators to re-position immigrant parents on and off the school landscape, acknowledge and learn from immigrant parents’ pedagogical practices in heritage language teaching and learning, develop immigrant parent engagement and leadership strategies, and so forth.
Conceptualizing and enacting immigrant parent knowledge holds the promise of bringing to the center the historically marginalized groups, enriching the education system with valuable and diverse knowledge, and working toward educational equity and justice for immigrant children.
Emma is doing invaluable work in the parent engagement space, particularly in regards to immigrant parent knowledge.
Follow Emma and her unfolding work on Twitter.
For further reading, you can find some of Emma’s recent publications here:
Chen, E. (2021). Supporting online learning in an unfamiliar language: Immigrant parents and remote schooling during COVID-19. The International Journal of Multicultural Education, [Special Issue 2021]: Digital Inclusion and Digital Divide in Education Revealed by the Global Pandemic. https://doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v23i3.2929
Chen, E. (2021). The pedagogical practices of an immigrant parent: Maintaining heritage language in the home context. LEARNing Landscapes, 14(1), 29-43. https://doi.org/10.36510/learnland.v14i1.1026
Chen, E. (2021). 5 ways immigrant parents support children’s home language learning. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/5-ways-immigrant-parents-support-childrens-home-language-learning-165989
Chen, E. (2021). Parent engagement in a new era of pandemic. Bilingual Basics. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolbeis/issues/2021-03-05/2.html
To learn more about Emma and my other graduate students, click here.