“That’s my mission”: Examining parents’ investments in their emergent bilingual learners’ development

Abstract

Numerous complexities undergird how parents support the bilingual development of their young learners, especially in a predominantly monolingual-centric society. In this article, we highlight belief practices which informed parents’ decision-making processes in supporting their children, who were enrolled in a diverse dual language immersion school in the Southeast U.S. Specifically, we focus on four ideological “investments” (Darvin & Norton, 2015) which shaped the social and cultural resources they leveraged and sought after for themselves and their children. These include: investing in an asset-based stance on bilingualism, investing in language as cultural practices, investing in the need to shape language development, and investing in the long run that bilingualism matters. These ideological investments, which influenced small and extensive actions, greatly impacted how parents participated in their children’s journey in becoming bilingual. We further discuss considerations for schools, which should take into account these types of parental experiences and insights so that schools and parents can work in tandem to champion success for their children.

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