Research With Young Multilingual Children Through Child-Centered Interview Activities

Abstract

Despite the increasing body of scholarship on multilingual children, little insight has been provided about what researchers need to consider when documenting and exploring young children’s multilingual experiences. In this essay, I engage in a reflective account of designing and employing child-centered interview activities (i.e., drawing, mind mapping, and self-portraits) and discuss opportunities, dilemmas, and challenges I encountered during the process. More specifically, I emphasize three actions that researchers, in and outside of the education research community, need to take in order to make research with multilingual children more child-centered and linguistically responsive: (1) positioning children as multilingual and transnational experts; (2) building on children’s multilingual repertoires; and (3) valuing multiple means of expression and centering children’s agency. This article makes a meaningful contribution to the field of education by discussing ways to centralize young children’s voices and experiences.