CAREER:Language Brokering and Child Adjustment in Mexican American Children

在这个NSF职业奖项中，Kim博士将研究墨西哥移民家庭中语言经纪人(即为父母担任翻译的儿童)的学术和社会情感发展。近90%的移民家庭儿童在其家庭的重新安置过程中扮演着语言中介的角色，承担着为英语能力有限的父母在传统语言和英语之间进行翻译的任务。然而，到目前为止，学者们几乎没有注意到作为语言经纪人的发展后果。这个关于墨西哥裔美国家庭的项目将从多个角度(目标儿童、母亲、父亲)探索语言中介体验。其目的是阐明语言中介如何影响亲子关系，更重要的是，它如何影响儿童在学业和社会情感方面的适应结果。350个墨西哥裔美国家庭将被招募到该项目中，这些家庭来自学生群体中有广泛拉丁裔的学校。这项研究有三个目的：1)了解儿童语言中介如何影响亲子关系，包括对母亲和父亲的任何不同影响；2)调查亲子关系如何在社会情绪发展和学业成绩方面与孩子的适应有关；3)探索青少年性别和学校/社区的墨西哥移民密度如何影响目标1和目标2。该项目有可能揭示语言中介对墨西哥移民子女适应的影响。墨西哥移民是美国规模最大、增长最快的少数群体。本研究将考察墨西哥移民子女的发展结果，墨西哥移民是贫困率高、受教育程度低的高危人群。该项目旨在了解移民子女提高学习成绩的机制，移民子女在美国儿童中所占的比例越来越大，他们代表着美国劳动力的未来。它还侧重于青春期的发展时期，这是一个过渡期，在这一时期，儿童容易出现可能损害学校表现的社会情感问题。这项研究有可能确定可用于指导未来对移民子女的预防性干预工作的风险因素。最后，该项目将培训传统上在科学领域中代表性不足的本科生和研究生，特别是墨西哥裔学生；提供课程，教育学生移民、种族和种族在儿童发展中的作用；并向教育工作者提供关于语言中介在儿童学习功能中的作用的讲习班、培训课程和时事通讯。

In this NSF CAREER award, Dr. Kim will examine the academic and socio-emotional development of language brokers (i.e., children who act as translators for their parents), in Mexican immigrant families. Close to 90% of children in immigrant families perform a language brokering function in their family's resettlement process, taking on the task of translating between the heritage language and English for parents with limited English-speaking skills. However, scholars have thus far paid little attention to the developmental consequences of being a language broker. This project on Mexican American families will explore the language brokering experience from multiple perspectives (target child, mother, father). The goal is to illuminate how language brokering impacts parent-child relationships and, more importantly, how it affects children's adjustment in terms of both academic and socio-emotional outcomes. Three hundred fifty Mexican American families will be recruited for the project, from schools with a wide range of Latinos in the student population. The study has three research aims: 1) to understand how child language brokering affects parent-child relationships, including any differential effects for mothers and fathers; 2) to investigate how parent-child relationships may be linked to child adjustment in terms of both socio-emotional development and academic outcomes; and 3) to explore how adolescent gender and schools'/neighborhoods' density of Mexican immigrants may influence aims 1 and 2. This project has the potential to bring to light the effects language brokering may have on the adjustment of the children of Mexican immigrants, the largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States.This study will examine developmental outcomes for children of Mexican immigrants, a high-risk population with high rates of poverty and low levels of educational attainment. The project aims to understand the mechanisms involved in improving the academic performance of children of immigrants, a growing and significant percentage of America's children, who represent the future of the U.S. workforce. It also focuses on the developmental period of adolescence, a period of transition in which children are susceptible to developing socio-emotional problems that can compromise school performance. This research has the potential to identify risk factors that can be used to inform future preventive intervention work with children of immigrants. Finally, this project will train undergraduate and graduate students who have been traditionally under-represented in the sciences, particularly those of Mexican origin; deliver a curriculum to educate students about the role of immigration, ethnicity, and race in informing child development; and provide workshops, training sessions, and newsletters to educators on the role of language brokering in children's academic functioning.