Dora Qizhao Chen
Supervisor: Dr. Jessica Chan
City: Kelowna
Occupation: Teacher
Year: 2026
Subject:
- Curriculum
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Description
Children’s early language and literacy development is shaped by multiple interacting factors, including the home literacy environment (HLE). HLE research commonly examines literacy-related resources and activities such as access to books, shared reading, and other literacy interactions in the home. For multilingual learners, these experiences may occur across languages, family members, and social contexts and may also include storytelling, family conversation, communication with relatives, and other culturally and linguistically situated forms of meaning-making. Research suggests that aspects of the HLE are associated with multilingual children’s language and emergent literacy outcomes, although these relationships vary across languages, family contexts, measures, and outcomes. This capstone reviews literature on multilingual home literacy environments to inform the development of a culturally responsive multilingual family literacy educator guide. Drawing on asset-oriented perspectives, the project considers families’ linguistic, cultural, and relational knowledge as resources while avoiding assumptions that all home literacy practices contribute to literacy development in the same way. The practical component translates this literature into accessible explanations and examples intended to support educators in developing respectful, context-sensitive relationships with multilingual children and families.
Student Biography
Dora Chen is an early-career elementary educator and a mother of an elementary-aged child. Her professional interests include creating inclusive, culturally responsive learning environments that recognize students’ diverse linguistic, cultural, and individual strengths and respond thoughtfully to their learning needs.