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Understanding How Emergent Bilinguals Bridge Belonging And Languages In Dual Language Immersion Settings, Marialuisa Di Stefano

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to understand how young children bridge belonging and language in a dual language immersion (DLI) setting. I developed a 10-week ethnographic study in a Spanish-English third-grade class in the Northeast of the U.S. where data was collected in the form of field notes, interviews, and artifacts. Here I explored the way language instruction and student participation influenced the development of the teacher and students’ multiple identities. The findings of this study suggest that emergent bilinguals’ identity development derives from the process built through multiple dialogic classroom instruction and practices. The products of this process …