“This is the Work I'm Most Proud of”: K‐Pop Fandom and Children's Multilingual Literacy Practices

Abstract

This paper examines how children's affective investments in K‐pop generated sustained multilingual literacy practices in an arts‐based bookmaking project. Drawing on Pennycook's concept of language assemblages and Norton's investment framework, and informed by Paris and Alim's distinction between heritage and community practices, we analyse what happened when children from diverse backgrounds, none with Korean heritage, began incorporating Korean words, scripts, and cultural references into their writing. Twenty children aged 9–11 participated in a 7‐week bookmaking project at a Melbourne primary school. Data include children's multimodal artefacts, field notes and interviews. Findings reveal that K‐pop fandom constituted symbolic capital within peer networks, driving engagement with Korean language that conventional frameworks struggle to explain. What emerged was not language acquisition in any conventional sense but assemblages of affect, media, peer culture and pedagogical recognition. The pedagogical move enabling this was recognition and extension rather than instruction. We argue that affective investment generates sustained literacy practice that skills‐based assessment cannot see or value, and that creating conditions for children's desires to become visible, rather than designing exclusively toward predetermined outcomes, opens space for meaningful literacy engagement.