Reconfiguring literacies: Young immigrant and emergent bilingual children's literacy practices in a Korean preschool
Open Access
- Author:
- Yoon, Yeojoo
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 18, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Esther Prins, Outside Unit & Field Member
Kimberly Powell, Major Field Member
Allison Henward, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Minsoo Kim-Bossard, Special Member
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Major Field Member
Andrea Vujan Mccloskey, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- Koryo-saram
Emergent Bilingual
Early Literacy
Translanguaging
Embodied Literacies
Literacies as Material
Korean Preschool
Multiculturalism
New Materialism
Posthumanism
Immigrant Children
Koreanness
Ethnography - Abstract:
- This ethnographic case study investigates how young immigrant and emergent bilingual children do and engage in literacies in a monolithic and assimilatory context and how the children’s various ways and forms of literacies are performed through non-verbal, embodied, and material features. I examine the literacy practices of children from a specific immigrant group, Koryo-saram, in a preschool and their homes located in the middle of Koryo-saram town, South Korea. While I was “being with” (Myers, 2019) children, teachers, objects, and spaces for seven months of fieldwork, I witnessed multiple, relational, and emergent literacies encounters. Through noticing something different than the traditional and developmental definition of literacy which is taken for granted in the field, I reconsider and rework data collected from the participants, materials, and spaces. Considering the encounters as literacy events through vital materialism and the concept of assemblage and drawing upon interdisciplinary concepts of literacies as embodied and material, my analysis sheds light on the multiple and emergent ways of the immigrant and emergent bilingual children’s doing and engaging in literacies, which are not often recognized and valued in Korean-dominated educational settings. The study ultimately demonstrates that by embracing extended definitions of literacies, language, and learning, the vitality of the moments of engagement in literacies, language, and learning that are typically less expressed in the classroom can be more visible and recognizable as capable of moving, feeling, and ultimately, expressing fuller literacy capabilities.