We just held our session ‘Supporting Multilingual Education in Early Childhood: Linguistic Anthropological Approaches’. Organized by Jennifer Reynolds (USC) and Amy Kyratzis (UCSB), the session examines the issue of how early childhood educators can be supported in sustaining and leveraging children’s expertise as a legitimate and generative means to expand linguistic repertoires and associated forms of knowledge production. The Zoom recording and documents will available through June 2022 to conference participants.
informal science learning
NAEYC 2021 session
I am part of a session ‘Bridging the gap: Developing accessible STEM programs and building partnerships to support bilingual children & families’ at the annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC 2021). I am joined by Hardin Englehardt (Marbles Kids Museum) and Grace Sanchez (GrowingGreat). We discuss developing bilingual, accessible, culturally-relevant activities and building community partnerships to reach families. If you are registered for the conference, our session is available through November.
ASTC 2021 panel
I am part of a session ‘Multilingualism in early childhood STEM: Developing accessible programming for children learning English’ at ASTC 2021, the annual meeting of the Association of Science and Technology Centers. I am joined by Hardin Englehardt (Marbles Kids Museum), D’nae Hearn (Detroit Zoo), and Grace Sanchez (GrowingGreat). We will share our varied experiences developing STEM programming to engage English language learners and their families and session participants with tools and resources to do so in their own communities.
AILA 2021 panel
I am participating in the 2021 World Congress of Applied Linguistics, hosted by University of Groningen (but, alas, online). I am on the panel ‘International perspectives on educational models for newly immigrated (refugee) children, adolescents, and young adults: Options, challenges & best practices’. My paper ‘Informal science for preschool dual language learners’ focuses on the innovative programs of our museum partners in the Expanding Repertoires project.
AAAL Summer Webinar
This Wednesday, July 28, at 3:30 EDT I will join my fellow authors from the edited volume Extending Applied Linguistics for Social Impact: Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations in Diverse Spaces of Public Inquiry for a AAAL Summer Webinar, ‘Collaborating and communicating with publics: Engagement for social impact’. The webinar will start with super short presentations by the authors, followed by ample time for discussion in break-out groups. AAAL members may register for free.
Language science, pandemic edition
The ¡Aquí se habla español!: Public Outreach at COSI in Spanish team is featured on the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Blog. ‘Language science, pandemic edition‘ tells the story of how we – in particular, graduate research associates Luana Lamberti and Shawntel Barreiro – adapted our science center-based project to conditions created by COVID19.
AAAL 2021 colloquium
I am presently participating in the 2021 American Association for Applied Linguistics virtual conference. With Jackie Ridley (Kent State), I have a paper, ‘Ideologies at the intersection of language learning, science learning, and play’. Our paper is part of the colloquium Jackie organized on Language Learning and Play in Preschool Settings, along with papers by Amy Kyratzis (UCSB), Katie Bernstein and Ryleigh Hait (ASU). It is amazing to be hanging out with so many applied linguists in one “place”, hearing about the work they are engaged in now.
New research brief in Connected Science Learning
Grace Kim and I have a new research brief, Multilingual families and field trips, published in Connected Science Learning. Based on findings from the Expanding Repertoires of Practice project, we propose the intentional inclusion of families in school field trips for young children as a practice with great potential to help science museums connect and engage with bi/multilingual families, provided the field trip is designed to support family learning and language use.
SLRF 2020 colloquium
Members of the Expanding Repertoires research team just presented a great colloquium at the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) 2020, ‘Scientific language and literacy practices of bilingual families with young children’. Grace Kim organized the colloquium and presented a paper, and Somin Kim and Minseok Choi presented papers. I was the chair and provided an introduction to the Expanding Repertoires project, within in which the reported research was conducted. We had a great turn-out and dynamic discussion. This was my first all-online conference.
¡Aquí se habla español! videos on COSI Connects
Check out the new videos from ¡Aquí se habla español!: Public Outreach at COSI in Spanish on the COSI Connects website. The videos are products of the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Community Engagement Grant I have with Anna Babel (Spanish & Portuguese), Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Linguistics), and Laura Wagner (Psychology). The videos were created by our amazing graduate research associates, Luana Lamberti and Shawntel Barreiro. COSI Connects is COSI’s Digital Doorway for fun at-home science discovery and learning. COSI is providing exciting and engaging science through COSI videos and hands-on science you can try with your family at home.