Early Literacy Development in Asian and Indigenous Children of Hawaiʻi: A Theoretical Framework on Multiple Aspects of Home Literacy Environments

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, in their seminar paper, “An Integrative Model for the Study of Developmental Competencies in Minority Children,” Garcia Coll and her colleagues (An integrative model for the study of developmental competencies in minority children. Child Development, 67 (5), 1891–1914. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131600, 1996) pointed out the critical roles of social position factors, such as gender, culture, race, ethnicity, immigrant or indigenous status, and social class, in shaping unique home and school experiences among children of color. Such “non-shared” experiences in turn construct an adaptive culture in which alternative cognitive, social, emotional, and linguistic competencies develop among minority children. Inspired by Garcia Coll et al. (An integrative model for the study of developmental competencies in minority children. Child Development, 67 (5), 1891–1914. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131600, 1996), the current chapter presents a theoretical framework of multilingual and multicultural home literacy environments (HLEs) that (1) highlights the importance of alternative language and linguistic competencies minority children develop to cope with their unique ecological circumstances; (2) integrates multilingual and multicultural experiences in conceptualizing various aspects of HLEs; and (3) contextualizes HLEs and early literacy development in relation to critical social position factors such as immigrant backgrounds and indigenous status. To illustrate this theoretical framework, we primarily focused on Asian and indigenous children of Hawaiʻi (i.e., Native Hawaiian children), both of which have been largely overlooked in the literature.