Asian American youth co-designing heritage language workshops for immigrant families: a community-based participatory research study

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger community-based participatory research (CBPR) project in which three teacher educators and educational researchers collaborated with four Asian American youth to co-design and co-lead workshops aimed at fostering heritage language (HL) learning and maintenance among immigrant children and families. We focus on the perspectives and experiences of the youth participants who grew up maintaining Korean or Chinese as their HL. Specifically, we examine how they view HL learning, reflect on their own HL learning journeys, and draw on their HL knowledge and experiences in co-designing and co-leading the HL workshops. The key findings of this paper include: 1) shared belief and diverse paths in maintaining HL, 2) the HL workshops as spaces to leverage knowledge and expertise, and 3) building a community of HL support to sustain HLs in a predominantly monolingual society.