Promoting Asian Immigrant Children's Early Literacy Development in School and at Home: A Culturally Reciprocal Approach

• In Event: 60.040 - Relationships Between Schools and Immigrant Families: Addressing Junctures and Disjunctures

Abstract

Objectives or purposes

Few studies have examined Asian immigrant children’s early literacy development and the factors that affect their early literacy development. In this paper, drawing on several studies on Asian and in particular, Chinese children’s early literacy learning in school and home, I examine how socio-cultural, socio-linguistic and socio-economic differences between school and home play an important role in Asian immigrant children’s early literacy development. The paper will be guided by the following research questions:
1. What does the home literacy of the focal children look like in Chinese immigrant families from different SES backgrounds?
2. What are the parental beliefs about literacy? How do parents’ beliefs influence their perceptions of their children's school literacy and education?

Perspectives

Early literacy for this paper is framed within a sociocultural lens in which language and literacy learning is not seen as an isolated, personal phenomenon but instead in relation to historical, situational, cultural, and societal factors that collectively shape the processes and consequences of learning (Gee, 1996; Street, 1993). This holistic approach to language learning allows me to center the focus on the participants while examining interconnections between the microlevel of individual learning and the macrolevel of society and contexts, such as the mainstream school and the Asian family’s home milieu.

Methods

In order to illustrate the ways early literacy is supported in different Asian families, I conducted a multi-site, cross-case analysis of qualitative data from three ethnographic studies previously completed in two different cities in Canada. The multi-site cross-case analysis allowed me to address the same research question with studies that used similar data collection and analysis procedures (Heaton, 1998; Heriott & Firestone, 1983; Merriam, 1998).

Data sources

Two low-SES Chinese families and one high-SES Chinese family from two studies in two sites were selected because they each represented a different socio-cultural location and/or a different SES group. Both studies were ethnographic in nature, and the data for each study were collected through interviews, participant observations, fieldnotes, and document collections.

Results and conclusions

The results show that the families differed in the literacy opportunities that the parents provide for their children, and their own literacy behaviors and preferences, the ways they teach and instruct their children, their aspirations for their children, their own educational backgrounds, and literacy beliefs, and their perceptions of literacy and schooling in Canada. In particular, the interrelationship between children and their families' ethnicity and their family circumstances, such as the physical and social environments at home, parental educational and cultural backgrounds, and occupational choices, have shaped immigrant children as different learners.

Scholarly significance

Their lived experiences suggest that immigrant children and their families cannot be seen as a uniform racial category and that understanding cultural differences between home and school is of great significance to Asian early literacy and living. The children’s and families' experiences highlight the need for teachers and educators to take a different approach to immigrant children in mainstream schools, and to connect classroom instruction with students' cultural identity.

Author

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia