Transnational Literacy Practices in Immigrant Families
Catherine Compton-Lilly, Jieun Kim, Erin Quast, Sarah Tran, & Stephanie Shedrow
In past centuries, physical barriers such as geography and distance limited
transactions between groups of people. Since the days when long-distance journeys were
required, various inculcations of technology have allowed increasingly sustained and fastpaced interactions that have to a significant degree overcome many of the challenges of
communicating across time and distance. Today’s transnational interactions serve scholars,
businesses, communities, and families via many different modalities and platforms. A
virtual technological explosion has ensured transnational traffic via automobiles, radios,
televisions, airplanes, telephones, computers, the Internet, and electronic mailing systems
(Appadurai, 1990).
These widespread transnational exchanges invite us to rethink existing linguistic,
literary, and communicative discourses and to explore emerging transnational processes
(Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005; Appadurai, 2010). Transnational interactions,
and the tensions that can accompany those interactions, are particularly apparent in
immigrant where families interact with contexts and across local, national, and
transnational spaces. In their review of transnationalism and literacy, Lam and Warriner
(2012) reviewed recent research to explore literacy practices in transnational families, the
cross-border experiences of migrant youths, and media practices in transnational
environments. However, almost absent from this body of work has been the experiences of
children as they increasingly engage with transnational experiences in families (de la
Piedra, 2011). As Lam and Warriner (2010) describe, immigrant students and their families
draw on transnational literacy practices to fulfill various purposes and functions in their
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lives. However, how students come to engage in those practices, how families apprentice
engagement in transnational spaces, and how these experiences contribute to identity
construction and literacy learning have yet to explored.
In this study, we explore how immigrant families with young children engage in
reading, writing, and viewing across transnational spaces. Specifically we ask, how are
young children apprenticed into transnational literacy practices and what do they gain
from these experiences? Drawing on 10 longitudinal case studies, we explore two types of
transnational literacy practices:
• Transnational literacy practices related to religion.
• Transnational practices and technology.
• The global awareness of children.
We use these transnational examples to explore what children gain from these types of
experiences and explore data that points to important sites of learning for children in
immigrant families. While our case studies provide numerous illustrations of these
practices, we seek to present more than description. As described by Blommaert, Collins,
and Slembrouck (2005) and Appadurai (2010), our data speaks to how language and
literacy practices are uniquely taken up by participants as literacies transverse
transnational spaces. In short, we explore the spontaneous apprenticeship of transnational
literacy practices within immigrant families and argue that these experiences offer unique
and valuable opportunities for learning.
Transnationalism and Immigrant Families
While the significance of global communication and exchange has been recognized for
decades and a range of terms (i.e., global, international, world-wide) have been used to
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describe and discuss these interactions, we have purposely opted to engage the term
transnationalism. Lam (2012) uses this term in conjunction with verbs including
“negotiate,” “take up,” “mobilize,” and “mediate” (pp. 191-193). These verbs highlight
movement and are accompanied by terms such as “migratory,” “flow,” “cross-border
connections,” “cross-border relationships,” “mobility,” and “intergenerational process”
which are described as “intersecting,” “competing,” and “intertwined.” Thus unlike “global”
and “international”, transnational explicitly highlights movement and negotiation across
spaces and over time. Jimenez, Smith, and Teague (2009) define transnationalism as the
“movement of people, media, language, and goods between distinct nation states,
particularly that which flows in both directions and is sustained over time” (p. 17). They in
turn define transnational literacies as “the written language practices of people who are
involved in activities that span national boundaries” (p. 17).
As a study of how young children are apprenticed into transnational practices,
negotiation, movement, and flows of activity present metaphorical understandings that
aptly capture the transnational awareness demonstrated by the children in our study.
While a useful term, transnational activity has created novel challenges for literacy
researchers as immigration and technology have created increased opportunities for
families and their children to participate in spaces that transcend local communities and
create immediate and ongoing opportunities for communication with family and friends in
native countries, peers in transnational networks, and viewing and engaging with media
from around the world. Transnationalism invites conversations across social and political
boundaries and raises issues related to the uneven power dynamics that accompanies
transnational, translinguistic, and transliterate practices (Blommaert et al., 2005).
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In this paper, we explore the transnational literacy practices of immigrant families
as unique and important spaces that while often invisible to schools, create powerful
opportunities for transnational learning that are often denied to children who inhabit
mono-national spaces. Our argument, along with arguments increasingly presented by
others, challenges generally accepted assumptions about immigrant children as language
deficit due to their lack of English, bringing deficits in background knowledge, and in
cultural practices to American classrooms. While some scholars have focused on the
affordances of being bilingual or biliterate (Moll, 2014), we highlight the unique and
valuable transnational knowledge that children in immigrant households acquire through
apprenticed relationships with parents. In short, we view these children as developing
valuable multifaceted and fluid literacy and language practices that involve transnational
knowledge and practices.
Literature Review
As geographical boundaries across the globe continue to diminish, the use of
diaspora media continues to expand (Lam & Warriner, 2012). Newcomer families are no
longer forced to sever daily ties (Lam & Warriner, 2012) with their country of origin—thus
creating transnational social networks, literacy practices, and individual and collective
identities (Reese & Gallimore, 2007). Children in these households develop transnational
domains of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005) in which they regularly hear and
use their home languages within transnational flows of “people, money, labor, goods,
information, advice, stories, [and] languages” (Sanchez, 2007, p. 260).
It is within these transnational flows that children and adults engage with and are
apprenticed into transnational literacy practices. As Rogoff (1990) explained,
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apprenticeship is “shared problem solving” where an “active learner”, or novice,
participates in a “culturally organized activity with a more skilled partner” (p. 39).
Apprenticeship occurs within a “community-of-learners” (Rogoff, 1994, p. 212) in which
children and adults collaboratively engage in structured, purposeful activities. In
communities-of-learners adult provide guidance while inviting children to participate and
manage their own learning. The apprenticeship activities that occur within these
communities can involve parents, peers, or community members (Haneda, 2006; Reese &
Goldenberg, 2008). In particular, researchers (Cooke-Cattone, 2004; Hawkins, 2005;
Williams & Gregory, 2001) have reported the significant role apprenticeship plays in
literacy learning. In their study of in- and out-of-school literacy practices among primary
school children in London’s East End, Williams and Gregory (2001) note the apprenticeship
role played by older siblings. This apprenticeship broadens younger siblings’
understandings of and participation in literacy practices at home and school. These
findings echo Rogoff’s (1990) assertion that experts within apprenticeship dyads are often
still developing their own skills while operationalizing their abilities to help others.
While all communities and families are essentially literate (Whitmore, Martens,
Goodman & Owocki, 2004), literacy practices differ from one cultural community to
another (Haneda, 2006) contributing to the development of transnational literacy
practices. For example, Sánchez (2007) describes how there adolescent girls, draw on their
experiences that cut across financial, historical, and technical spaces to explore their
experiences as members of immigrant families. These girls crafted illustrated of their
narratives depicting their experiences related to family, migration, and “home” by drawing
on transnational resources and multimodalities. Sánchez (2007) argues for “looking at
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children’s lives beyond the classroom wall, and even beyond the local community, is not
enough” explaining that educators and researchers must explore the “transnational social
spaces that our immigrant students maintain in other countries and how these experiences
have the potential to shape their narratives and reading of the world” (p. 279).
The meanings given to these transnational literacy practices shifts among and
across contexts (Reese & Goldenberg, 2008), as well as children’s level of involvement
(Haneda, 2006). Families’ and children’s transnational practices have not yet been fully
documented or analyzed. This area of literacy research remains relatively new and undertheorized (Lam & Warriner, 2012; Sanchez & Kasum, 2012). Additionally, scholars have yet
to examine how children learn, negotiate and enact transnational practices (Orellana,
Thorne, Chee & Lam, 2001). In this paper, we address this gap by highlighting the complex
roles that children play as they engage with transnational literacy practices not only as
apprentices of adult practices, but also as participants in transnational literacy activities
(Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003, p. 18).
Methodology
This collective case study involves 10 children from immigrant families that have
come to the United States from all parts of the world. The students entered the study when
they were in kindergarten, grade 1, or grade 2 and had been followed for three years at the
time this paper was written. During the first year of the project, we visited each child at
home and school five times. In subsequent years, we visited three times. Each year, we
collect observations, spoken data, and artifacts. Data sources were carefully identified to
highlight the various spaces that the immigrant families occupy or have occupied (i.e.,
home/neighborhood/ school; native country/country of residence). Parallel data sets are
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being collected each year. Thus every year, we ask children to complete the same or similar
tasks. For example, we ask children to draw a picture of their family’s native country each
year. This allows us to explore both change and continuity across time in how the children
depict their native countries. Data included observations of children at home and school,
parent, student, and family member interviews, additional student-created artifacts (e.g.,
writing samples, maps, photographs), and conversations about these artifacts. Interviews
focused on children’s school experiences, interests, literacy achievement, and literacy
practices. We ask questions that invite parents and other family members to share their
thoughts about the focal child – his/her personality, preferences, interests, and literacy
practices.
As we began our analysis of the data, we coded interviews and field notes using a
combination of a priori and grounded codes to explore children’s experiences relative to
literacy, identity and schooling. Knowing that identity and literacy would be foci of the
project, a priori codes (child identity, home literacy practices, school literacy practices)
were created. Interviews and field notes were also subjected to a grounded analyses which
resulted on a set of tangential codes (e.g., pop culture, language practices, native country)
as we contextualized our analyses and made sense of emerging patterns. Reflecting
constructs relevant to transnational experiences and literacy, this analysis led to the
identification of three transnational spaces related to religious literacies, digital literacy
practices, and transnational awareness among young children.
Some transnational practices, especially those related to religion and technology,
were easily identifiable in the interview transcripts. Others were less visible and we were
hesitant to identify these spaces until we noted that they were reflected in children’s
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multimodal artifacts including their drawings and photographs. Themes related to
transnational awareness were confirmed as we triangulated various artifacts including
student-taken photographs of their homes and schools, children’s self-portraits,
conversations about published photographs of their home countries, and children’s
drawings of their current community, native community, and maps of their neighborhoods,
schools, and homes. These artifacts highlighted what children identified as significant and
provided clues about emerging transnational awareness.
An Introduction to the Families
The families in this collective case study brought a range of transnational
experiences. Some had traveled back and forth to the United States. Others had lived in
other American or Canadian cities prior to moving to the Mid-Western city in which this
longitudinal study was conducted.
Findings
Our reading and rereading of coded data across the sample led us to focus on three
transnational spaces: (1) transnational literacy practices related to religion, (2) digital
media and transnationalism, and (3) children’s global awareness. Each of three spaces
entail transnational language and literacy practices. Transnational spaces can involve more
than language and literacy practices. These spaces provide opportunities for cultural
practices and transnational communication. While across the families numerous spaces for
transnational literacy were identified, below we focus on religious and digital spaces.
While the full paper will present data from several families in our sample, this conference
paper presents a smaller set of illustrative data to explore these transnational spaces. We
end with a brief discussion of the transnational awareness exhibited by the children.
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Transnational Religious Spaces
Religious literacy practices provide significant spaces for apprenticing young
children into literacy practices (i.e., Sanchez, 2007). Engagement with religious and cultural
literacy practices often occurs in communal spaces such as churches, heritage schools,
community centers and online forums. These communal spaces are inherently social,
allowing people to share, negotiate, construct and reconstruct literacy practices while at
the same time solidifying cultural, linguistic and religions affiliation among members
(García-Sánchez, 2010). Through engagement in religious literacy practices, our focal
children developed transnational perspectives not always afforded to them in mainstream
spaces such as schools.
For the purpose of our analysis, religious literacy practices are loosely defined and
include interactions with religious texts and interactions within physically defined
religious spaces (e.g. home, church, mosque, temple) and online spaces (e.g., websites,
blogs, chat rooms). Although we use “cultural” and “religious” as an adjectives, we perceive
cultural and religious practices to operate as verbs (Gutiérrez, 2008) that are constantly
enacted and therefore fluid in nature. Religious knowledge and tradition shifts over time
as families engage with practices in new local contexts and within new communities
ultimately giving rise to new religious and cultural practices. As illustrated below, in many
instances religious and cultural practices are often intertwined as family often participate
in religious spaces that support cultural practices or vice versa.
Transnational religious practices occur across religions and nationalities. For
example, The Roland family crafted a religious space that blended the Christian practices
that they brought from Korea with American/Korean Christianity resulting in a unique set
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of bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural practices. Liz’s mother and father are active
participants in their local Christian community where they have made many friends from
diverse cultural and national backgrounds through Ms. Roland’s work as a language
teacher and Mr. Roland’s volunteer work in the church. Liz and her family participate not
only in Christian practices but also participate in traditional Korean cultural activities
including learning and using the Korean language. Transnational religious exchanges and
practices provide Liz’s mother with spaces and materials for teaching Liz to read and write
in Korean. She strongly believes that speaking Korean and knowing Korean culture are
important for Liz: “That’s [the church is] a Korean language school so I don't want Liz lose,
you know Korean culture and language everything so I like her to go there learn Korean
stuff.” Preservation of native language and heritage traditions are important to many of
our families and often supported by religious institutions that provide access to texts and
activities.
In a local church-based Korean school, Liz’s team played a game called Yoot-nori
which is similar to chess. As Liz finished the game, she moved on to other Korean games
including Jae-ki-cha-gi which involves hitting a small shuttlecock like ball with one foot, Gomu-jul which is similar to jumping rope, Too-ho which involves throwing sticks into a
basket, and Jang-chi-gi or Ddak-chi-chi-gi which entails hitting and flipping a specially
folded piece of paper. Following these games, the children made Korean style dumplings,
which they cooked in a rice cake stew called Dduck-guk that Koreans traditionally eat on
the Lunar New Year. Finally, the children dressed in traditional Korean Hanbok dress and
learned how to bow - an important Korean custom. Bowing is an important practice on
many traditional holidays and Korean parents and teachers regard bowing as an important
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skill for Korean children. Thus the children practiced the detailed postures that vary
depending on the child’s gender and the occasion.
Interestingly, the forms of Christianity that families from Korea, China, and Mexico
brought are rooted in Europe and imported by missionaries to Central American and Asian
countries. This historical movement highlights how religious practices migrated around the
globe long before the internet - blending Christian practices with local customs and beliefs.
Religious and cultural texts not only provide resources to support religious practices but
also create strong transnational links.
As Muslims, Adam’s family accesses a multi-layered network to locate religious
books in Arabic from their home country of Morocco. With the support of the local Mosque,
Ms. Barami uses Moroccan Arabic materials to support Adam in learning, practicing, and
memorizing texts including the Qu’ran. Ms. Barami shows members of the research team a
book she uses to help Adam learn to read and write in Arabic. The book is designed for
novice readers and moves from pictures that adults can discuss with children to Arabic
letters. From there it introduces common letter combinations and simple words. The 160
page book features lessons open with a short story followed by comprehension questions
and spelling exercises.
Adam’s mother describes some of the other religious books that they own, “I have
the Qur’an and some ahadith (collection of the Prophet’s traditions), If you want to learn
something about Islam, I check this book and I read the question what you can do [to learn
more].” Ms. Barami explains that these books address issues such as “What is haram
(forbidden) and, what is, is not haram.” She brought some of these books with her from
Morocco and others were importsed by her brother. She explained, “He has a LOT [of
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books] because when he went to Morocco, EVERY time, he brings a LOT about Islamic
studies.” Ms. Barami shared literary materials amongst her friends including “CDs about
the Islamic studies” and magazines in Arabic. She reports that she generally does not have
time to read the magazines “I told you when I have free time, I just do my homework [for
learning English] and sometimes especially at the night, I want to read the Qur’an.” These
transnational and local textual flows affected her emerging literacy practices in English
especially once the family purchased a computer. The computer allowed the family to
digitally access texts in Arabic and participate in online forums, including some in English.
In later interviews, Adam described an iPad app that he used for memorizing the Koran.
This app would display the text while providing an oral reading to support Adam with his
task of memorizing.
Across the families, religion and religious literacies are enacted through
transnational links. These links are part of the very fiber of the family practices. They
parents are constantly engaged in these practices – using both traditional and digital texts.
Children observe, participate and eventually take on transnational to meet their own goals
and address their own interests. Some of these involve technology, while others do not. In
each case, family members engage in negotiations that neither replaced nor abandoned
existing the home religious practices; instead, existing practices are negotiated, extended,
and refined through negotiations in new spaces and the availability of online resources.
Digital Media and Transnationalism
Beyond the physical barriers of geography and ecology, participants in this study engage in
long-distance journeys through their use of digital media. Internet operate as a
transnational communication tool across long distances and international borders. Digital
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technologies including the Internet, mobile phones, computers, tablets, and smart devices
are ubiquitous and key mechanisms for transnational communication in immigrant
families. These technologies involve various modalities including sound, image, animation,
and communication via their use of computers, game hardware, digital cameras, CD and
mp3 players, and cell phones (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). We observed gaming systems,
internet via computers, various means of streaming movies and television, as well as digital
communication to witness how immigrant family members generated and negotiated
meaningful communication across local, national and transnational spaces.
When asked about their reading practices, several parents reported that they did
not read much, while simultaneously describing a vast range of digital literacy practices.
For example, Ms. Li reports readed Chinese newspapers on her Kindle explaining, “we don’t
have the physical paper.” She noted that having the “link of the major newspapers” and
reading only “electronic magazines” including Time. Simultaneously, she described
providing her son with an online subscription to National Geographic. She used QQ an
international instant messaging site, which she described as “like a Facebook” to stay in
touch with friends and family. She explained that she has been posting on the site for
several years. “I like to write. [The] other day I checked [and] I already wrote like about 40
or more [posts].” She writes about the family’s experiences in the United States and in
particular about her children and the Chinese college students that they host at their home.
Ms. Li posted both information that is publicly available and information that can only be
accessed by friends and family. Both means allow her “to share my life.” At work, she
writes “technical reports.” While her personal writing is in Chinese, her professional
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writing is in English. As she explained, “I don’t think I can write very good English,
especially express myself the feelings, [there are] many words I don’t know how to write.”
Ms. Manuel, Carlitos’s mother, keeps current with events in Mexico by following the
Yucatan newspaper that she accesses online. She also listens to Mexican music and watches
Mexican movies and telenovelas (soap operas) online. During one interview, Ms. Manuel
interrupted the ongoing conversation to note that she had just received a text from a friend
who forwarded a statement from India Maria, a famous Mexican actress, who was
reminding Mexicans now living in America to remember their Mexican roots.
Natesh, Elina’s father, reads “bi-weekly magazines and papers [online]. Yeah I do
that. Almost every day.” He reads the local papers from Nepal as well as accessing BBC
online. Natesh reports that while they do not own books in Nepali, he can find plenty of
texts online. He reports that most recently he has been reading about personal financing.
He explains, “I tend to use the articles on the internet about money and personal finance
mainly right now.”
In addition to accessing texts, videos, news broadcasts, and games, technology was
also used to communicate directly with family and friends in native countries. For example,
Mr. Roland has an internet phone from Korea that she used to talk with family in Korea “at
least once a week.” As she explained, “I usually hand [the] phone to my kids” to encourage
her children to talk with family members in Korean. This practice also occurred in Adam’s
Moroccan American family where technology to provided a vital link to their home country
and to Adam’s father who had been denied re-entry into the United States. Online
communication was particularly evident after the family purchased a laptop computer. Ms.
Barami began using both Facebook and her email more often. She explained that she
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communicated with people from all over the world. She regularly uses Craigslist to find
things she needs explaining that she had started to do this more as her English has
improved. When asked about her reading practices, Ms. Barami reported reading
magazines in Arabic. She describes these magazines as being about clothes and other
women’s issues. After being introduced to Skype by a member of the research team, Rosi
used the internet to stay in touch with family in Mexico. Ms. Manuel describes writing posts
describing what she sees on Facebook and posts recipes and “things that come to my mind,
things that I plan, things that I have to say to my [extended] family.”
Sara tells us that she uses photographs to teach her children about Mexico and the
relatives they left behind. She explains, “My family send me pictures always I [say to the
children] “look, look, this is this” or “here is I, where I sleep” or “this my room” or “this is
my garden.” She also reports that they post videos on Youtube of her small town saying, “I
can see my school, my church. . . or home videos. My brother send me [videos of] my
streets and everything.” Sara speaks longingly of her home town in Oaxaca, Mexico,
explaining, “all my memories are in Oaxaca.”
The families also highlighted the advantages of online practices. For families that are
far away from home and extended families, the immediacy of the Internet is important.
Rather than relying on mail for family updates or seeking out international newspapers,
families can log on and immediately access current information – personal or public – that
helps them stay connected with their native spaces. The internet provides immediate
access as well as the ability to access massive numbers of texts. While participants
including Mr. and Ms. Li acknowledge that they are not accessing in-depth information,
they value the breadth and range of information available. In particular, Mr. Li is adamant
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that that the internet is an essential space for accessing unbiased news. He reports that he
reads various blogs on the Internet saying that “Fox news is pretty bias, so I don’t really
trust them.” The family described a recent debate between their oldest son and his father
involving freedom of press. Ironically, this debate led to an Internet search to resolve the
disagreement.
In short, transnational technological practices were part of the literacy fabric of
immigrant families. Technology was used, shared, and swapped between children and
adults as parents sometimes took on novel transnational practices that were later taken up
by their children and visa versa. Technology was a unique space, perhaps similar to
language, in which children’s schooled lessons with technology provided them with the
abilities for them to sometimes broker technological with adults while at other times learn
from these same adults.
Discussion: Children’s Transnational Literacy Awareness
In this paper, we explore routine transnational literacy practices with an eye to how
these transnational practices develop, when and how children are apprenticed into
transnational literacy practices, and the significance of these practices for children. In
particular, we propose that the unique and important learning accompanies these
transnational practices. While there are probably many things that children learn through
the transnational experiences, we focus on knowledge related to space and time.
Some instances of transnational awareness went unnoticed and were overlooked
when the data was initially collected. Elina, a student from Nepal commented on the
climate differences noting that Nepal is “small and it has a lot of stores and it never- it only
snowed once.” Her older brother, Manish, noted that in Nepal “use the metric unit instead
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of the US customary [system]” and that the “base unit of money there is rubi. . .I also know
that one dollar from here is 70 rubis in Nepal.” Manish also explained that in Nepal they
use different “letters” to write.
Across the families, children used multimodal literacy practices to present their
emerging understandings of the world. They often did this fluidly and without hesitation.
When asked to write a picture she had drawn of Mexico, Maya wrote, “I love Mexico” –
spelling Mexico in both English and Spanish. Carlos drew his state and accurately placed a
star to indicate the location of the state capital. He labeled the city “Shoreline.” When asked
if he wanted to add anything to his picture. Carlos added a soccer ball on top of his state
and labeled it “America.” He then drew a line from the soccer ball to the bottom of the page
and wrote “Mexico team.” On another occasion, Carlos drew maps of the United States and
Mexico on two separate sheets of paper; on each map he drew the respective country’s flag
saying “It's both flags of Mexico and United States.” When asked by the researcher, “If you
put Mexico in the right spot where it should be in relation to America? Carlos correctly
responded, “On the bottom.”
Carlos’ awareness of political geography was similarly evident for other children
across the sample. When asked to draw the United States, Liz navigated the world drawing
several other countries. She pointed as she described her picture:
This is New York. That’s France. This is airplane. This is lots of suitcase. That’s
orange in Korea. And right here’s Texas, Here’s Mexico. Here’s French. Here’s New
York. There’s water. . . I thought this could be Mexico. Maybe, this could maybe
Texas. May this could be Korea. Or that can be Korea. And this can be Hawaii. And
this can be water. So I need a blue color (See Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Liz’s drawing of the world
In some cases, the children’s maps revealed extensive interest and knowledge about
the world. For example, James provided a particularly rich description of his map. For the
sake of readability, we have condensed James’ comments into the following narrative.
There’s something kind of shaped like a triangle, but it looks like this [James draws a
triangular shape]. It’s North America. [James then points saying] Here’s land
between North America and South America. And then South America. This is Brazil
[James draws a circle within triangle]. . . And then here, this is Europe, and then here
is Asia with a tiny point down there, which is India. [James draws a shape that
resembles Africa saying] long ago it was connected to North America and South
America.
James was particularly interested in plate tectonics and provided a detailed explanation:
There were plates. The plates were like moving apart. . . Here is the Indian plate
which is around India and it includes the Indian ocean [James points]. Here’s part of
North America and then the rest of the land connects to each other. [James then
references his family’s home country saying] Wait, remember that land we were
talking about? It’s right here, China. Here’s the land there. It’s right here - Russia.
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While some children displayed spatial transnational knowledge, other children,
revealed transnational understandings of time. Adam described Skyping with his father in
Morocco and revealed an emerging understanding of the time differences between the
Unites States and Morocco. He notes differences between the Moroccan calendar and the
calendar used in the United States saying, “ Because they do not have time [like we do] like
Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays” and then continued on to describe the time
differences. “We call [Skype] usually at 12AM because then they would have 12 [o’clock], I
don’t know, 9-10 [o’clock], something like that, around there.” While he is not clear on the
specifics, Adam clearly has an emerging sense of how time can be different both in terms of
calendar and clock in different parts of the world.
As might be expected, children’s transnational knowledge was imperfect, sometimes
inaccurate and sometimes revealed confusions alongside emerging understandings. When
asked what she thought about living in America, Maya replied that there were a lot of
animals. When asked what she meant, Maya identified “dangerous animals like lions.” The
researcher and Maya’s mother quickly discerned that she was confusing American with
Africa.
Despite some inaccuracies, we argue that this data reveals emerging understandings
of the world – in terms of both time and space – that we found intriguing and important.
Immigrant children expressed an understanding of themselves as world citizens in ways
that see unusual and impressive. In short, we argue that this transnational awareness is a
generally unrecognized ability that many immigrant children bring to classrooms.
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Conclusion
As evidenced in this paper, children in immigrant families bring rich transnational
experiences to classrooms. Some of these are related to religious practices; others draw on
digital and technological texts and communication. In our families, we witnessed
technological brokering occurring between adults and children around these sets of
literacy practices. We also highlight evidence of remarkable learning displayed by children
and their emerging global awareness.
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