During graduate school and beyond, I worked with a team of researchers exploring the “language brokering,” or translating and interpreting, completed by youth from immigrant families. As part of this team, led by Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, I explored:
- whether active language brokering affected children’s academic achievement and development from 1st to 5th grade (Dorner, Orellana, Li-Grining, 2007)
- how language brokering qualitatively changed from early childhood to adolescence (Dorner, Orellana, Jimenez, 2008)
- the nature, tensions, and turning points of language brokering into “emerging adulthood” (Dorner, 2017)
- how language brokering is a type of civic engagement (in progress)