Latino Children as Language Brokers
From 1998-2003 I worked with a research team at Northwestern University to study the work that the children of immigrants do as translators, interpreters, or what we call "para-phrasers" for their families. The aim of these inter-related studies were to map the variety of ways in which the children use their knowledge of English to speak, read, write, listen, and accomplish things in the social world for their families; to understand how children and families experience these translations; and to identify how the skills that children deploy while translating can be leveraged for school literacy learning.

California Childhoods
This research project was funded by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways through Middle Childhood in a grant to Catherine Cooper (UC Santa Cruz) and Barrie Thorne (UC Berkeley). It examined the daily life experiences of children living in three different communities in California. As a postdoctoral researcher on this project, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in an area of central Los Angeles that is home to immigrants from Mexico and Central America. This was the same community in which I worked as a bilingual classroom teacher from 1983-1993.

Gendered Literacy
My dissertation research examined the gendered nature of literacy practices across a variety of activity settings in two bilingual classrooms in California.

 

UCLA
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
Translations | CA Childhoods | Gendered Literacy | Orellana
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Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

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