Project Summary/Abstract
Culturally competent assessment tools are a crucial component in providing bilingual Latinx
children with a free and appropriate public education. However, many assessment tools used with
culturally and linguistically diverse children are based on WEIRD norms. Health disparities occur
when children’s linguistic skills are measured up against WEIRD norms rather than practices from
their own linguistic and cultural communities. This research will (1) provide documentation of
storytelling practices and styles for bilingual Latinx children and (2) compare the utility of using
measures derived from within the linguistic community with measures derived from WEIRD language
norms. Ethnographic observations, interviews, and surveys will serve as the main methods to gather
what storytelling practices bilingual Latinx children with DLD are typically exposed to. Narrative
sample analysis will be utilized to analyze children’s narratives. Two scoring systems will then be
used: one derived from the data gathered in (1) and the other will be based on extant, traditional
measures of narratives. By documenting the storytelling practices of bilingual Latinx children with
DLD, we can utilize culturally and linguistically appropriate descriptions of linguistic backgrounds for
linguistically minoritized children with disabilities. By comparing performance based on
community-generated measures with extant measures of narratives, we can learn which methods best
fit culturally specific ways of telling stories in narrative performance. This will allow us to understand
normal linguistic processes in culturally and linguistically diverse communities that we can then use
to understand disordered linguistic processes in these communities, thereby reducing health
disparities. This fellowship includes mentorship and training opportunities with researchers across
California, including a data collection site in Santa Ana, CA. The training goals for this fellowship
include training in qualitative research methods and psychometrics.
