Researching the Continua of Biliteracy

Abstract

The growing number of bilingual individuals in US schools has encouraged educators to pay more attention to how they might better support bilingual children's academic performance. The research on multicultural and multilingual families and children has repeatedly reported that families strongly expect their children both to develop socially recognized linguistic competencies and strategies and to learn their heritage language and cultural ways of interacting (eg, Lee, 2013; Lee&Shin, 2008). Educational policy that emphasizes improving bilingual children's English only, however, creates a subtractive learning environment that marginalizes bilingual children's linguistic and cultural resources and their ability to exploit these resources for their meaning making and learning. Understanding how multilingual families incorporate linguistic and cultural resources to support their children's bilingual and biliteracy development can help educators develop more responsive ways of bridging school and home experiences.