Subcommunities of Similar Thinkers About Literacy Learning Among Immigrant Mothers, Their Husbands, and Kindergarten Teachers

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Contested Relationships in Early Learning

Abstract

To improve mutual understanding between public kindergarten teachers and new-immigrant families in Taiwan regarding children's literacy learning, we sought to refine conceptualization of philosophical differences between and within groups; to leverage mixed-methods synergies to more deeply understand adult groups' underlying philosophies; and to deepen interview-based description of Vietnamese-immigrant mothers', their husbands', and their children's teachers' beliefs and priorities with intra-individual significance analysis. Survey participants (91 mothers, 93 fathers, 122 teachers) provided a normative reference against which ethnographic targets (4 mothers, 4 fathers, 8 teachers) were positioned and compared. Intra-individual significance analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) revealed differing philosophical wedge issues in each group—requiring theorists to reckon with the existence of virtual subcommunities of philosophical like-mindedness.

Authors

• Ching-Ting Hsin, National Taitung University

• Gary Glen Price, University of Wisconsin - Madison