Engaging Dual Language Learner Families in Their Child's Early Education

• In Event: Supporting Dual Language Learners, Their Families, and Their Teachers: A Statewide Study of Learning Across Systems

Abstract

Purpose. This study explored the family engagement practices of ECE programs serving DLLs—and the associated practices and beliefs of the families served by those programs. Family engagement clearly matters for DLLs’ outcomes (NASEM, 2017), but little research has looked at non-Spanish-learning DLLs. In addition, there is much still to learn about how families’ capacities, and their beliefs about raising a bilingual child, are related to the actions of their child’s early learning and care programs (see Surrain, 2018).

Theoretical framework. When conceptualizing this study, we drew on asset-based perspectives on DLLs’ early learning and development (e.g., García, 2017) and on two-way communication approaches that engage families in their child’s education (e.g., Halgunseth, 2013). Communicating with families about their home language and culture is a critical component of effective—and culturally and linguistically sensitive—family engagement (Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch & Hernandez, 2003).
Methods. We surveyed 1,824 families who reported speaking a language other than English at home and who had a child enrolled in an early care and learning program. Families completed an online survey between late 2019 and early 2020 about their educational practices with their children and interactions with staff at their children’s early learning and care sites, in addition to basic demographic and background variables. Family home languages included: 86% Spanish, 7% Cantonese, 4% Mandarin, and 3% Vietnamese.

Evidence and analytical approach. Descriptive and multilevel regression analyses were conducted. We descriptively explored teachers’ reports of the strategies they used to engage families, and families’ reports of their and their sites’ behaviors, including differences by family home language and self-reported English proficiency.
Regression analyses were used to predict family behaviors and beliefs from program practices as well as other potentially explanatory factors, controlling for family demographics and nesting students in classrooms in programs. The main variables examined included:
· Families’ beliefs, and sites’ messaging, about bilingualism
· Families’ use of learning activities at home with their child
· Resources and guidance provided by sites
· Characteristics of communication between sites and families
· Family engagement in activities at sites
Results (selected). Families reported being contacted by their program in English, their home language, or both at about equal rates. The language of contact was largely consistent with families’ own self-reported language proficiency, yet respondents who were English-proficient were more likely to engage regularly in activities at their child’s program. Families at sites that provided learning materials for home use reported engaging their child more frequently in activities like reading and counting; those who were told about the importance of reading and doing math with their child at home engaged in a wider range of learning activities, more often, with their child at home.

Scientific/scholarly significance. Families’ practices can promote positive child outcomes (e.g., Demir-Lira et al., 2019), and this study indicates a range of ways that ECE programs can work to cultivate those practices responsively. Questions remain as to the sources of variation in findings by language background and other characteristics and will be discussed.

Authors

• Lisa B. Hsin, American Institutes for Research

• Iliana Brodziak de los Reyes, American Institutes for Research