Community Engaged Research as Relationship Building: Multilingual Parent Funds of Knowledge Stories

Abstract

This study examines the cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992; Moll, 2019) of multilingual families shared by parent authors in bilingual children’s books integrated into culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014) shared in formal and informal learning contexts -- including elementary schools, public libraries and parks, teacher education university courses, and digital platforms. This study practices community-engaged research in which the experiences and perspectives of participants and researchers shaped how data was collected, understood, and shared with others (Bay & Swacha, 2020). Parent authors were invited to partner in generating, reflecting on, and sharing stories as educational community experiences, and as part of a study focused on fostering appreciation, understanding, and preservation of cultural and linguistic heritages as a significant aim in in our multicultural, multilingual world. As part of this, the study supports teachers, schools, and community stakeholders in including diverse languaging features (García, 2009) in curricula and instruction. Community engaged research highlights the complexities of the human experience and results in a valuable outcome beyond quantifiable data: community relationships. This collaborative inquiry into the development and sharing of multilingual parent books revealed relationship building as an artistic, authentic, and humanizing practice of bridge-building.