Advancing multimodal literacy pedagogies in early childhood for Asian heritage language learners through offline and online platforms: a cross-case analysis

This study examines how multimodal literacy pedagogies support young Asian American heritage language learners across two community-based settings: an offline Korean heritage language classroom and an online Chinese heritage language book club. Using a qualitative cross-case design, it explores how culturally and linguistically sustaining multimodal activities were enacted across these settings and supported children’s engagement with heritage language and culture. Data included video recordings and children’s multimodal artifacts from both sites, along with teacher reflections from the offline classroom and family book discussion data from the online book club. Findings highlight three themes. First, multimodal literacy practices supported children’s meaning-making in both settings, but through different interactional, material, and spatial configurations. Second, children represented cultural knowledge through multimodal artifacts and interactions, with the offline setting emphasising collaborative prop-making and embodied enactment and the online setting emphasising drawings, writing, and home-based cultural resources. Third, the cross-case comparison showed that offline and online settings offered complementary affordances for multimodal heritage language learning. The study contributes to scholarship by showing that multimodal literacy practices can broaden participation in heritage language learning and that their culturally sustaining functions vary across offline and online community-based settings.