Bilingual Children's Writing: Evidence of Active Learning in Social Context

Abstract

Abstract A bilingual family literacy project was the basis for a descriptive research study, one aspect of which was a study of children's writing. The purpose of this study was to add to the existing data that focus on the relationship between children's literacy development and sociocultural aspects of each child's life. In this study, we identified some cognitive processes in biliteracy acquisition through categorizing the children's work according to Piaget's active learner categories that show learners constructing knowledge for different purposes. We also made the point that in these writing samples and in other data collected, these cognitive processes are interwoven into the sociocultural development of each child; individually and as a member of a family, a school, and a community.