Parental Involvement in Learning Mandarin Chinese Among Students in Chinese Vernacular Schools in Sabah
Alexander Funk1*
1 School of Arts and Education, Swinburne University of Technology, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]
Accepted: 15 March 2022 | Published: 1 April 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.55057/ijares.2022.4.1.15
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract: In this article, a study was conducted to explore the pedagogical strategies employed by non-Chinese speaking parents through daily interactions at home to support their children’s Mandarin Chinese language development. Data was collected in three phases, phase one was a pilot study to identify the problem, phase two collected data using a survey questionnaire and phase three involved interviews with parents. The quantitative survey indicated that many parents believe they should be involved and take an active role in their children’s learning.
However, many did not have direct communication with the school or teachers but maintained strong links with other parents via social networks. The qualitative study showed that despite the effort to send their children to private tuition after school, the intervention did not have a direct impact on children’s academic achievement. Parental involvement goes a step futher with parents taking personal interest and carrying out specific activities with their child to support and enhance their learning experience.
Keywords: second-language acquisition, parental involvement
___________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
Research on bilingual and multilingual development has increased considerably over the last 30 years but much work has been concentrated on the pedagogical strategies adopted by teachers in school (Seidenberg & McClelland 1989; Wang, Perfetti & Liu 2005; Nicoladis 2006; Laurent & Martinot 2009; Wang, Perfetti & Cheng 2009; Kohnert, Kan, & Conboy 2010;
O’Brien & Blue 2017). However, research on how the family or the parents in particular, support their children linguistically is limited in comparison. This article draws on the findings from a study on parental perception of their roles in their children’s learning conducted in Sabah, Malaysia.
Parents want the best for their children and often take the role of teachers at home. Sometimes parents may not be equipped with the technical or specialised knowledge to teach a particular subject, so they leave it to the trained teachers in school, but most parents are inevitably involved in the child’s learning. Children learn and grow at home, in school and in a community, and it is a social fact that youngsters learn from their families, teachers, peers, relatives, other adults and the mass media. As pointed out by Epstein (2001), for many years, learners navigate back and forth along the link between school, their home and community which are significantly adjacent to one another to learn and grow to reach adulthood. The success and failure of these links depend on how well or poorly designed the links between
home, school and community is and it is therefore necessary to ensure that the most effective framework, systems and practices are in place to ensure positive results as an outcome of well- connected linkage (Epstein 2001).
Sometimes teachers find one way of teaching that works with some students but not others and it can be frustrating to try to find the best learning environment and approach to suit all students.
Although parents and teachers strive to provide the best learning experience for students, the hard truth remains that there are too many variables which influence a child’s learning and finding the best approach may be futile. This is because every learner is unique, every teacher is unique, and so is every learner-teacher relationship (Brown 1994).
In the area of knowledge acquisition, teachers and parents may ask themselves “Where do the higher processes of child thought come from? How are they built up and through what means are they developed?” Vygotsky’s answer (2004) to these questions would be “They arise during the process of a child’s social development by means of transferal to himself or herself of those forms of cooperation which the child absorbs in the process of interaction with the surrounding social environment.” (p. 206). Hence, this study proposes that a child’s interactions with the surroundings are integral to their growth. A review of related studies, in fact, shows that students’ interactions with other people at home, at school or in a community can affect their academic achievement (Phillipson & Phillipson 2007).
This study focuses on the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese (henceforth referred to as Mandarin or Chinese) as a second or third language in Chinese vernacular schools in Sabah, Malaysia.
The nature of acquisition of Chinese is different from that of English and Malay that students learn. Firstly, orthographically, Mandarin is not written in Roman/Latin alphabets that decodes the phonemes of the spoken language. Wang, Perfetti and Liu (2005) point out that alphabetic languages like English and French or English and Spanish share fundamental alphabetic principles and this knowledge can be transferred from one language to another. However, this cannot be done with Chinese given the difference in orthography between English or Malay and Chinese. Therefore, children “acquire one orthographic system independent of the other”
(Wang, Perfetti and Liu 2005, p. 83). Secondly, Chinese and English are morphologically different. As pointed out by Cheung, et al. (2010), English is an inflectional language governed by relatively stable inflectional rules while Chinese is an isolating language with little or no inflection and word formation is mostly by compounding (p. 369). This means that morphological awareness between Chinese and English may not be as readily transferable, an argument also confirmed by Wang, Perfetti and Liu (2005). Hence the approach to Chinese taken by teachers and parents would be different because students whose first language is not Chinese will not learn the language in the same way in which they would learn other languages.
Parents’ motivation to send their children to a Chinese school is one point of interest for this study and how parents support their children’s learning that contributes to the children’s academic success is another area of interest.
Based on a pilot study conducted in a Chinese primary school in Kota Kinabalu, it was observed that the achievement levels of non-Chinese children in acquiring Mandarin differ. Some children do exceptionally well whereas some do not. In other words, there is a disparity among students in terms of their academic performance although they are from similar family backgrounds.
This study considers that parental involvement in these families is a significant factor contributing to such disparity as it is believed that the more parents are involved the more
support they are going to provide for their children in acquiring Mandarin. The result of parental involvement or intervention could be a reason for the high academic achievement of these children all other things being equal.
The main focus of this study is therefore the relationship between children’s achievements in the target language, Mandarin, and parental involvement in their children’s education.
Specifically, the objectives of this study are as follows:
i. To investigate factors contributing to non-Chinese students’ success in learning Mandarin despite having a non-Chinese home language;
ii. To determine the degree of parental involvement in the chosen research context and categorise them; and
iii. To identify structured practices adopted by parents so that they can be emulated by others to achieve similar outcomes in student achievements.
The study also explores students’ academic success in Chinese as a second or additional language in relation to their success in Mathematics and Science. A major scholarly interest for the researcher is to explore the variables in success rate for second language acquisition and obtain a greater understanding of the phenomenon. The findings from the project will benefit schools as well as the larger educational community because it will provide a better understanding of how parental involvement can contribute to a student’s language acquisition process.
2. Methodology used in this study
This study adopts the mixed-method approach to research and involves the use of both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The entire process is divided into three phases and this research design was chosen because it provides a more complete understanding of the research problems and helps to explain some of the relationships found to exist between variables. For example, the quantitative data collected through the survey questionnaire in Phase 2 indicates that many parents acknowledge the significance of their involvement in their child’s learning yet at the same time they do not feel confident or competent enough to assist their child in learning Mandarin. This phenomenon among others can further be investigated using qualitative methods such as personal interviews in Phase 3 as this is not possible with the quantitative method. A mixed-method study can help to cross-validate relationships discovered between variables to see if they concur on a single interpretation of the phenomenon and if they do not concur, then an investigation for the lack of concurrence can be carried out.
Phase 1
Phase 1 involved (1) collecting and analysing data on students’ test scores in relation to their ethnicity to determine if there is a disparity between learners of the similar background and (2) testing the reliability of the survey instrument used in Phase 2 of this study.
Non-Chinese students’ test scores in Mandarin, Science and Math
Figure 1: Test scores of Non-Chinese students in Mandarin, Science and Math
In the year 2014 of the total 2,148 students in 48 classes of that school, 571 students (26.58%) were non-Chinese. A sample size of 365 students was taken of non-Chinese students. Only the ethnicity of the children and the aggregated data of test scores in Mandarin, Math and Science for the year 2014 were used in Phase 1. The test scores were analysed and findings showed that 42.2% of students scored below 40% in Mandarin while 7.9% scored 80% and above. This disparity reaffirms the need to further investigate the phenomenon of high achieving students and their parents’ involvement in their studies. The survey instrument was also pilot tested and modified before being used in the main study.
Phase 2
Phase 2 involved conducting a quantitative study using a questionnaire which was distributed to 11 Chinese schools in the Kota Kinabalu district. Each school was given between 50-60 copies of the survey instrument the entire document was written in English and Malay languages. The questionnaire included open-ended questions which asked respondents about their connections with other parents because it is believed that parental involvement also extends to connecting with other parents in school. Respondents were asked questions relating to sharing of information on school activities, academic work or other matters on their children’s school life with other parents. Respondents were also given the opportunity to give suggestions on what they would like to see improved or developed in the school.
Phase 3
As argued earlier, however, data collected through questionnaire survey only provides part of the whole picture. As maintained by Dörnyei (2003), questionnaires inherently provide a somewhat superficial and relatively brief engagement with the topic on the part of the respondent and requests for longer responses (more than a sentence) often lead to refusals to answer the question. Therefore, a qualitative approach was needed and 16 parents who volunteered were interviewed using a total of 19 interview questions designed to elicit responses to answer the research questions.
Results and findings: Phase 1
The purpose of Phase 1 was to identify non-Chinese population and their academic performance in Chinese, Science and Mathematics. In the year 2014 of the total 2,148 students in 48 classes of that school, 571 students (26.58%) were non-Chinese. The sample size was determined at 365 students of the population of non-Chinese students.
To achieve the first objective and to determine if there was a discrepancy in academic achievement among non-Chinese students in 2014, test scores from a total of 365 non-Chinese students with 173 males (47.4%) and 192 females (52.6%) were obtained for Mandarin Chinese, Science and Mathematics which are taught in Mandarin. An average of 7.5% or 27 students scored 80% and above while passing rate for the three subjects was 28% or 102 students. The results show that in the Mandarin language examination paper, a majority of the students (53%) scored between A and C (with A: 7.9%; B: 18.1% and C: 27.4%) and 46.6%
scored below a C. This suggests that 53% of the students were doing well while the remaining students were not. A majority of the students (63.3%) scored between D and E (with D: 18.1%
and E: 45.2%) and only 36.7% scored above a C. This suggests that most of the students seem to have had trouble with Science taught in Mandarin. While there could be many reasons for the students’ lack of competency in Science, the language barrier could also be a contributing factor.
Next, the test scores of students learning Mathematics show that students scoring between A and C (with A: 8.8%; B: 17.5% and C: 23.8%) comprised 50.1% of the population while 49.8%
scored below a C. This indicates that almost half the students were struggling with the subject while the rest were doing well. The analysis of the students’ test scores in Mandarin Chinese, Mathematics and Science shows different mean values. The mean score for Mandarin and Mathematics subjects each recorded 44.8 with a standard deviation of 20.185 and 42.83 with a standard deviation of 22.760 respectively. This shows that the average level of student achievement in both subjects is at grade C (40-59 marks). For Science, however, the mean score was 31.94 with a Standard Deviation of 26.502. The mean scores show that the average level of student achievement for this subject (grade D) was lower comparatively.
We can also see a significant disparity in the scores for all three subjects. The number of students getting lower grades, that is, D and E were significantly higher than students scoring better grades, A and B, in all three subjects. In Mandarin, 170 students obtained grades D and E while only 95 students managed to get A and B grades. In Science, 165 students obtained grade E compared to only 21 students who obtained grade A. Furthermore, in Mathematics, 182 students obtained grades D and E compared to 96 students who obtained A and B grades.
Overall, the level of student achievement in Mandarin and Mathematics subjects are below average whereas the level of student achievement in Science was alarming with almost half of the students scoring E and with some students scoring zero in the examination for this subject.
The research study aims to investigate parental involvement for non-Chinese students to support their children’s studies. Interestingly, the presence of a group of high achieving students albeit a small group also justifies further investigation into the reasons why these students were successful.
Results and findings: Phase 2
Section A of the survey explored the parents’ contact with the school and teachers and Section B the extent of their involvement in their children’s education. Section C and Section D tried
to find out parents’ perceived responsibilities towards their children’s education and their connection with other parents respectively. Section E looked into their demographic background.
Out of 600 sets of questionnaires sent to the potential respondents, 551 responses were received and descriptive analysis, normality test, reliability analysis and Pearson’s correlation analysis of data collected through this research instrument were conducted using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 22 software.
Summary of responses to the questionnaire - Phase 2
The first part of Section A in the research questionnaire asked parents concerning the school’s contact with them while the second part explored parents’ perception of the school and teachers.
Responses to A1
In Section A Part 1 parental responses suggest that they felt engaged with the teachers or school in only some areas. The items that most parents (n = 551) selected which they felt engaged was
“gives me information about how report card grades are earned” at 36.7%, followed by
“contacts me if my child is having problems in school” at 35.4 %. However, 43.4% felt that the teacher only helps them understand their child’s stage of development once in a while. The same goes for telling parents about how the child is doing in school and have meetings with parents to discuss the child’s progress, 45.9% and 42.1% respectively felt that the teacher only does this once in a while. 29% of respondents felt that the teacher never explains how to check their child’s homework while 42.7% felt that the teacher never contacts them if their child does something well or improves.
Parents want to be effective partners to teachers and the school but to do that, parents need to know what is happening in school and inside the classroom and what is required of them at home in order to provide a supportive learning environment to ensure success for all students (Conley 1993; Seitsinger et al. 2009). Knowledgeable and involved parents are acute to student’s success (Henderson & Berla 1994; Epstein & Sanders 2002; Fan & Chen 2001;
Henderson & Mapp 2002; Seitsinger et al. 2008). The findings of the data indicate that at the school level, teachers are not showing support to the concept of parental involvement and parental partnerships. The schools do not appear to guide parents on how to participate and support their children’s learning at home. The parents are willing to learn the skills and techniques that can help them with their children’s education but the schools need to actively engage them in the school programmes and activities. Teachers, on the other hand, need to improve their connection with parents to disseminate information relating to the child’s progress or behavioural aspects in the classroom.
As seen in studies conducted by researchers, such as, McNeal (1999), Abouchar (2003) and Karıbayeva & Boğar (2014), parents often perceive themselves taking a more active role in school. These studies found that most parents emphasize the importance of having an on-going rapport with the school and the teachers whether it involved visiting the classroom if their work commitments allowed them or attending interviews or receiving academic results and school circulars. The findings of the present study imply the need to strengthen communication between school and parents. More frequent and open communication is needed besides the meetings during the report card day. Establishing good relationship between parents and school could help parents get information like school’s behavioural expectations and other useful guidelines for social control, which could affect the success of parental participation. Good
social control can be achieved by having well-coordinated work between parents and teachers and general agreement about acceptable behaviour which can be explained to children in school and at home (McNeal 1999 cited in Abouchar 2003; Karıbayeva & Boğar 2014). When children receive identical rules or advice from both parents and teachers, they will instinctively follow the instructions. Thus, students get instruction about the importance of school, social control and social capital and it promotes children’s capability, motivation to acquire knowledge and taking part in different school activities (Grolnik and Slowiaczek 1994 cited in Hill and Taylor 2004; Karıbayeva & Boğar 2014).
Responses to A2
In Section A2, to identify parents’ perception of their child’s school and teachers and almost 98% of parents thought the school was good for their children and about 34.3% of them strongly agreed that the child was learning as much as he/she could at their present school.
Besides the two items mentioned, almost all items received positive comments from the respondents (more than 50% of the respondents selected ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’). The data indicated that about 48.6% of the respondents felt that they could help their children in the Chinese language with 8.5% choosing ‘strongly agree’ while 40.1% ‘agree’. However, 51.5%
of the parents reported that they were not confident in teaching their children the Chinese language. Their perceived inability to help that was reported by half of the respondents could have an effect on the student’s academic achievement. However, 75.7% of respondents felt that they can help their child in Math and Science despite Chinese being the language used to teach these subjects.
The parents’ perception of the school and teachers was reported to be very good overall as can be seen from the statistics that 89.9% of parents agreed with the item “the teachers at this school care about my child”, followed by 88.7% of parents agreeing with the statement “I get along well with my child’s teacher(s)” and 88.4% of parents agreeing that “I feel welcome at the school”.
In the United States, school reform efforts have been made to transform parents to become partners, blurring the links between school and families, school and community, and community and families. Parents are asked to enter into educational partnerships with schools in a variety of ways, ranging from active mentoring to participation in school improvement initiatives, participation in school events, and home support for students’ learning (Swap 1993;
Epstein 1995; Haynes & Comer 1996; Vincent 1996; Seitsinger & Zera 2002; Seitsinger et al., 2008).
The possible significance of creating effective parent-school partnerships is reinforced by research that show strong links between parent involvement in their child's education and student academic achievement (Henderson & Berla 1994; Epstein & Sanders 2002; Fan &
Chen 2001; Henderson & Mapp 2002; Seitsinger et al., 2008). Students belonging to more educated families which are supportive and involved in their education tend to perform better academically and display more positive attitudes toward school and have higher expectations (Clark 1983 cited in Henderson and Berla 1994; Epstein 1992). These observations have been found to be accurate regardless of socioeconomic background (Kellaghan et al., 1993), ethnicity (Chavkin & Williams 1993; Keith & Lichtman 1994), and marital status (Epstein 1990).
According to the studies mentioned above, improvements in students’ mentoring relationships with their families and teachers as well as improved academic attitudes, self-esteem and pro-
social behaviour were related with school-based psychological and behavioural outcomes. The synergetic relationship observed was shared across genders and in elementary and middle school students in the United States. In other words, as parental involvement increased, behavioural problems among children decreased (Zick et al. 2001). Some studies also concluded that parental involvement and academic achievement have a consequential outcome to a child’s behavioural problems, truancy and school dropout rate (McNeal 1999; Domina 2005; Klugman et al. 2012). The results from the survey indicate that the school authorities in the present study should think of ways to bridge the divide that separates teachers and parents.
There are underlying reasons behind the lack of connectivity between the two groups however investigating what those reasons are is beyond the scope of this project.
Responses to B3
To identify respondents’ perceived involvement with their child’s learning at school and at home and based on the responses, 79.9% of the respondents considered telling the child about the significance of school as important. 78% considered talking to their child about school is important and 75% considered asking their child how well he/she is doing in school is important. Surprisingly, 47.4% of respondents reported to never communicate with their children’s teacher over the phone and 63.7% stated that they never talk to their child’s teacher in school. Some of the possible causes may well be Mandarin as the barrier of communication between teachers and non-Chinese parents, parents’ work commitments or an issue of teacher’s personal time being encroached upon by parents when parents contact them after work hours.
Parents’ perceptions of education institutions may also influence their attitudes and beliefs towards the role of a school and its teachers. These perceptions may facilitate or inhibit parental involvement in their children’s education. For example, some Asian American and Latino cultures traditionally believe the school is responsible for their children’s education and not the parents (Taliaferro et al. 2009; Tyler et al., 2008). On one hand, parents may be intimidated by teachers and other school authorities or may feel too incompetent to be actively involved in their children’s education because of their own level of education or socio-economic status as pointed out by Taliaferro et al., (2009) while some parents feel they do not have the authority to question or disagree with a trained educator (Archer-Banks & Behar-Horenstein 2008;
DePlanty et al., 2007). This sentiment is supported by some teachers because they do not want to be questioned on their teaching styles and methods. A situation like this would significantly decrease the potential cooperation between parents and teachers to work together for the benefit of the student (DePlanty et al., 2007).
Items which respondents found difficult to be involved were “Help your child with Chinese language homework” (26.5%), “Help your child prepare for a Chinese language test” (22.1%),
“Help your child with Math homework” (36.5%), “Help your child prepare for a Math test”
(29.9%), “Help your child with Science homework” (40.3%) and “Help your child prepare for a Science test” (31.2%). These responses reflect the lack of academic support parents provide to their child at home which could be caused by parents’ lack of confidence or knowledge of the subject material or their linguistic ability to participate in their child’s learning.
On the other hand, 24.9% of respondents felt confident in helping their child with Chinese language homework, 35.6% felt confident with Math homework and 29% felt confident with Science homework despite not speaking the language at home. A similar pattern was observed when respondents were asked about helping their child with tests: 26.7% felt confident with Chinese language tests, 35% felt confident with Math tests while 31.2% felt confident with Science tests. These respondents felt confident in helping their child with homework and tests
despite the challenge of the Mandarin language. An investigation carried out in Phase 3 of this study attempted to further understand the phenomenon where some parents seemed to be more confident and involved while some were not and how this presence or absence of confidence and involvement was related to their child’s academic achievements.
Responses to C4
Section C4 assessed what parents perceived to be their responsibility in their child’s education and overall, more than 70% of respondents agreed with the statements in Section C4. This indicates that most parents subscribed to an active role and participation in their child’s learning. According to Gelber & Isen’s study (2013), there was a significant and positive correlation between parents’ beliefs and their involvement in their children’s learning based on the results of the Pearson product-moment correlation. The results of our present study coincide with those of their study where parents’ beliefs and parents’ involvement towards their children have a positive relationship. Their study also showed that parents agree to assist their children to have better performance in school (e.g. doing well in school with good grades and better performance), assist in their homework, better learning and motivate them (see also George &
Mensah 2010). This study indicates that 97.1% of respondents agreed that parents should help their child understand homework although how they actually helped was still a question given the fact that some of the homework would require understanding of the Mandarin language in order to complete the work. This was further investigated in Phase 3 of the research study.
Responses to C5
Section C5 investigated parents’ perceived confidence about their personal involvement in their child’s education. Similar to the responses in section C4, more than 70% of respondents agreed with the statements on how well they were contributing to their children’s learning. Most parents believed that they were making positive contributions and a sense of confidence of these respondents was reflected in their responses to the statements “I know how to help my child do well in school” and “I know how to help my child get good grades in school. Only 21.6% of respondents were reported to choose ‘disagree’ with the statement “I know how to help my child with homework”. This indicates a strong sense of confidence on the part of the parents to assist their children with assignments that definitely need prior knowledge in the Mandarin language. Since the responses from a survey questionnaire can only yield limited information which does describe the reasons for the responses, further investigation was warranted and conducted in Phase 3 using personal interviews with parents to understand the factors affecting their involvement with their children and the school.
Responses to D6
Section D6 of the survey looks at the extent of parents’ involvement with other parents and explores the role of social contacts and networks among parents as a contributing factor to assist parents in managing their children’s education.
In general, more than 40% of the respondents were reported to talk or share with other parents about their child’s school life once in a while. 31.6% stated that they talked with other parents about the activities at their children’s school while 31.2% shared with other parents about their children’s behaviour or misbehaviour in school.
The channel of contact reported in these responses highlights the significance of internet and social chat applications like WhatsApp for parents to exchange information about their children’s school work and upcoming school events. This social networking was reported to
help parents with busy schedules which did not allow them to meet other parents personally to understand the Chinese school system better and how to provide support for their children.
Summary of responses from interviews: Phase 3
Responses to Question 1
The first interview question was “Being a non-Chinese speaking parent, what made you decide to send your child to a Chinese school?” to find out why they sent their children to a Chinese- medium school while they did not use Chinese at home. Parents sent their child to these schools knowing that they would face challenges in providing assistance in their child’s learning and school work. The responses received were varied but 37.5% of participants answered that knowing the (Mandarin) Chinese language would provide better career and job opportunities in the future. Parents believed that China is emerging as a world superpower in terms of trade and investments and thus held that (knowing) the Mandarin language would be an advantage for their child’s future. 25% of the respondents considered Mandarin as a means of communication not only for work but also for socialization given its status as the lingua franca among Chinese people in Malaysia. Parents’ recognise the utilitarian or instrumental significance of Mandarin regard Chinese schools are places to learn and to be exposed to Mandarin.
Discipline as a reason to send their children to Chinese schools was reported by 43.75% of the respondents. They felt that the Chinese system or teaching pedagogy is suitable to instil a sense of discipline toward learning and to hold the acquisition of knowledge in high regard. One parent mentioned the Chinese cultural identity that is present in Chinese schools attracted her.
Students are exposed to the Chinese cultural heritage through various activities like Chinese calligraphy writing, Chinese chess, Chinese musical instruments and celebrations like the Lunar New Year, Mid-autumn festival and the Dumpling Festival or more commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. Chinese schools provide exposure to the rich Chinese cultural heritage that is not found elsewhere. This was described by Hedegaard (2009) where cultural influence is reflected in historically evolved traditions and interests practiced in a society, with children developing by experiencing the activities in social institutions to which they belong.
Parents’ desire for their children to learn a second language was noteworthy as reported by approximately 19% of parents. This is not uncommon in a multilingual nation like Malaysia where either Mandarin or Tamil is offered only in vernacular schools while Malay and English are learnt as core subjects in all government schools in Malaysia.
Responses to Question 2
The second interview question was “Do you think learning Mandarin is important? Why?” The responses to Question 2 reiterate parental sentiments for sending their children to Chinese schools and again reinforce their belief that Mandarin is a globally recognised language for commerce and social communication. Parents also believed that having Mandarin as a second language or third language was important for the child’s future career prospects. Though all respondents did not speak Mandarin, they realised the privilege of knowing to speak, understand, read and write Chinese.
According to Gill (2010), Chinese vernacular schools have enjoyed sizable financial support and political backing from the Chinese community in Malaysia. Students in these schools tend to perform better in mathematics and science compared with their ethnic Malay counterparts
in public schools. Thus, an increasing number of ethnic Malay parents are sending their children to Chinese schools. According to (CPPS 2012) there were approximately 80,000 ethnic Malays attending Chinese vernacular schools or SJK(C)s in 2012. Overall, approximately 20% of Malaysian primary-aged children attended SJK(C)s in 2012.
Responses to Question 3, Question 4 and Question 5
The following questions were raised to determine each respondent’s child’s achievement levels in Mandarin, Mathematics and Science.
• Question 3: How is your child doing in learning Mandarin?
• Question 4: How is your child doing in learning Mathematics?
• Question 5: How is your child doing in learning Science?
A total of six parents described their child as a high achiever (Grades A or B) in all three subjects while five parents described their child as a low achiever (Grades D or E) in all three subjects. Five other parents had children with mixed achievement levels for the three subjects.
Responses to Question 6
The following is the summary of responses to Question 6 “Do you think that if your child can successfully learn Mandarin, it will help in his/her Math and Science? Why or why not?”
The majority of parents (68.75%) felt that learning Mandarin was directly related to a student’s success in mastering Math and Science because parents realised that students had to understand the questions written in Chinese sentences before they could solve the Math problem or they had to learn specific words and terminology in Chinese in order to answer the Science questions. Many parents felt that their children did not have a problem with arithmetic or understanding the concepts in Science but the language barrier was causing difficulties for their children to do well. When explored further on how their child could overcome this, two parents responded that they used technology to help while another commented that the tuition teacher helped to explain the meaning of the text.
Responses to Question 7
The participating parents were also asked “Do you think that the school is effectively teaching your child Mandarin?” Responses to this question are summarised as follows.
Seven out of sixteen respondents felt that the school was effectively teaching their child Mandarin but some felt that the number of students in classes was too large for effective teaching to take place especially for weaker students who needed more personal attention. That explained the need for extra tuition classes outside school. Two parents felt that a lot also depended on the child’s attitude towards learning. Parents thought that the teaching-learning process is a bidirectional process and if the child was uninterested or not keen to learn then there was only so much the school could do. Some parents thought that the school environment would help their child acquire the language at least on a conversational level but the demographics of Chinese schools were changing with an increasing number of non-Chinese student enrolment. This was supported by the report from the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS 2012) on vernacular schools in Malaysia. Parents feel that learning Mandarin is more effective with immersion into a Mandarin speaking environment, but with the large number of non-Chinese speaking students in Chinese schools, the opportunity and tendency for their children to revert to their mother tongue of Malay or English language is greater now.
Responses to Question 8
Phase 3 participants were also asked “Besides studying in school, does your child receive any help outside the school in learning Mandarin? (If yes, what form of help?)”. The following is the summary of responses to this question.
More than 68% of parents interviewed sent their children to extra tuition outside the school as they could not help the child with their school work and revision. Many relied entirely on tuition teachers to assist the child where the child failed to understand the lesson by the school teacher. Tuition teachers effectively become surrogate parents when it comes to teaching Mandarin or Chinese related subjects. Some relied on older siblings, colleagues or parental network for assistance.
It was learned from the respondents that with the availability of social network applications like WhatsApp, parents and students easily connected with their friends to ask for assistance when needed. One parent commented that they simply snapped a picture of the question and posted it in a group chat consisting of their classmates (Parent 1). Those who did not send their children to extra tuition relied on technology for assistance such as Google Translate application that enables users to scan the sentence in Chinese from the device camera and translate it to English (Parent 7). The translation may not be entirely accurate, but it gives the user an idea or gist of the meaning. One parent commented that sending to extra tuition would increase student achievement while another parent said “you see, with tuition she also has problems, 40% - 50% (marks) I don’t know if without tuition what will happen because all the while from primary one already tuition. I never stop” (Parent 10).
To see whether giving extra tuition helped the child improve their academic achievement in these three subjects, four of the six high achievers went to extra tuition while two did not. Yet three of the low achievers went to extra tuition while two did not.
Responses to Question 9
Participants of this study were also asked “Do you think that it is important for your child to receive this extra help outside school?” Responses to this question are provided below.
More than half of the respondents replied that if nothing else, at least the tuition teacher could help their child with homework. One parent commented that “her friends who went to tuition all got 80% something even the kids who you know cannot cope in kindergarten got 70%. So, the tuition is effective, you could see that straight away” (Parent 1).
Not all parents feel the same though. One parent of a low achieving child felt that children should not be overly dependent on tuition; “Yes, it’s very needed but we need to control.
Hopefully I’m right by taking away some of this extra help gradually. I noticed that his performance is not much affected because he’s not bright based” (Parent 12).
Another parent of a high achiever said “My honest opinion is like this ok, because she is still in primary, I do not want to force feed my daughter. If I really want to force feed I can send her to any tuition I want but to me I have this principle that a child even though they have to study but they will also need to have some enjoyment” (Parent 8).
Some parents felt that the child’s learning attitude is a key element to success in learning. One parent commented about personalities and characters; “you’ve got another child who wants to do the best that she can and she feels that she needs to go to tuition for that although she is the
smartest student in school. It’s really weird but it comes to the characters. I tell you, you can see it from the very beginning. When she was in kindergarten, when I pick her up, instead of just talking or snacking she’ll open her book and she’ll read whatever it is that she learnt that day. That is only her. None of the boys do that” (Parent 9).
Responses to Question 10
Question 10 “How will you describe your involvement in your child’s learning? Do you do anything yourself to help your child learn Mandarin?” was designed to see if there was anything parents did differently that could lead to successful children. The survey indicates that parents with children in all levels of achievements did two things in common and they include:
i. Giving encouragement to learn the language.
ii. Buying Chinese story books to read.
It follows that children’s high achievement may not be an outcome of these two activities as children of the respondents who gave these responses had different categories of achievement.
Encouraging their child to learn and giving advice can be considered an act of duty or obligation by parents while purchasing Chinese reading materials may or may not translate to better grades since low achievers as well as high achievers have Chinese story books to read.
However, a few high achievers did indicate that they were avid readers but they read English as well as Chinese books.
The data also indicate that about 37% of respondents relied entirely on the school and tuition teachers to manage their child’s learning. These parents felt they were unable to read or speak Chinese therefore unable to involve themselves with the daily academic lives of their child.
Their involvement included sending their child to school, making sure the child attended any extra classes in school and sending them to extra tuition outside the school to assist with the homework etc. All these parents had children who were low or medium achievers. The data concurs with Section A2 of the survey questionnaire where more than 50% of respondents felt that they were not confident to teach their child the Mandarin language.
Technology helps the child complete the homework but does not result in higher grades during assessments. Parents who provided technology like a translator in this study had low achieving students. A possible reason for this could be that students did not actually learn Mandarin when they translated the text to English, rather the technology allowed them to comprehend the text by translating it. This technology, however, is not available during assessments and examinations.
Parents of high achieving children did one or more of the following things with their child:
i. Reading their Chinese textbooks and workbooks with them and giving them spelling tests.
ii. Learning the language themselves by using Pinyin to help them read.
iii. Writing a Chinese word on paper and asking the children to identify it.
iv. Role playing with the children (create games).
v. Creating opportunities for the child to practise Mandarin.
All parents with medium and high achieving children had a timetable or schedule of daily activities which they required their child to follow with regimental discipline. This indicates that parents must get involved personally to monitor and check their children’s work and progress. Parents who leave everything to the school and tuition teachers may not have high expectations in terms of academic results and/or they may not get the results they want. Parents
of high achieving children in this study got involved personally in their child’s learning although they may not know how to read or speak Chinese, but they did activities with their child and that made the difference. Some parents made the effort to learn the language, albeit a little, themselves and used that knowledge to test their child. They did spelling exercises, word identification, role-play and created opportunities for the child to practise the language in social settings.
Response to Question 11
To explore further about the respondents’ opinion on the level of effectiveness of what they did for their child, participants were asked “Do you think what you do is effective in helping your child learn Mandarin?” The following is the summary of responses to the question.
Some parents felt that a strict routine was important to build self-discipline from a young age and the child would carry that discipline with him or her when they go to secondary and even tertiary education. Parents believed that the Chinese school system helped create the foundation for learners to put first things first and to begin with the end in mind. Children do not know this at a young age but the training they received and the learning habits they form will benefit them when they are older. However, parents felt that brute force was not going to work.
Children have evolved from the time their parents were in school and forcing them to do something will probably backfire. Parents felt that a lot depended on the child as well. Parents felt that some children were by nature more obedient and accommodating and would follow their parents’ wishes and listen to the teaching and instructions given by teachers. Some children may also be naturally smarter and can acquire languages easily without the need to struggle or work hard at it.
However, it was observed that parents who took a personal involvement in their child’s learning and did extra activities to help them learn generally got better results. This correlates with the data obtained in the survey questionnaire where parents were asked what they ought to do with their children: 93.6% of respondents agreed that parents should test their child on subjects taught in school; 98.3% of respondents agreed that parents should show an interest in their child’s schoolwork and 97.1% agreed that parents should help their child understand homework. Parental support groups were also reported to be important for non-Chinese speaking parents to get assistance and information to manage their child’s learning.
Responses to Question 13 and Question 14
The following questions were raised to see if the child was independent of the parent and would be able to cope with their learning without parental involvement:
• Question 13: Do you think your child will be able to learn Mandarin at home on his/her own?
• Question 14: What do you think would happen if you did not do these activities with your child?
The summary of responses to these questions is provided below.
Most respondents felt that their children would not be able to learn Mandarin without the extra support given either directly by the parents themselves or indirectly by their tuition teachers.
Parents felt that relying on the school system alone was inadequate for children from non- Chinese speaking families. 44% of the respondents felt that if this extra support were removed, the child would probably survive but the results would not be good.
Responses to Question 17
To explore further what was found out through Section A of the Phase 2 survey questionnaire, participants were asked whether they communicated with their child’s school, how, how often and why they communicated with the school. See below for their responses.
This part of the interview attempted to explore how parents connected with the school or other parents as a form of support to help them manage their child’s education. Question 7 in Section D of the questionnaire survey conducted in Phase 2 asked parents how their connection with other parents helped them whereas the interview question asked about their relationship with the school staff, specifically teachers. According to the majority of the interviewees, they seldom spoke to the teachers and only met them during report card day. Some parents felt that teachers did not like to entertain parents because they thought parents had a lot to complain or would make special requests for their child and teachers were always busy. Parents only spoke to the school when they had to and some thought that teachers’ feedback about their child was always the same and there was nothing new they could learn from the teachers. The data indicates that parents have a stronger relationship with other parents than with the school staff.
However, some parents were able to form healthy connections with the teachers, these parents were better at establishing relationships. For example, one parent commented “I’ll be extra good to the teacher, I told her can you please help out and then she’s (child) quite lucky that all the while her Chinese teachers in school are quite friendly with her” (Parent 10). This data correlates with section A2 of the survey questionnaire where 89.9% of parents agreed with the item “the teachers at this school care about my child”, while 88.7% agreed with the item “I get along well with my child’s teacher(s)”, and 88.4% agreed with “I feel welcome at the school”.
Schools affect parent-involvement levels. Literature suggests that many parents want to be involved but schools and the MOE are not supportive or do not provide the right channel for communication they will foster better parental engaged with their children’s education. Epstein (1991) reported that a large number of parents are not involved in the most common forms of connections with their children’s school. Epstein (1992) concluded that (a) more than 33% of all U.S. parents did not have a meeting with a teacher during the school year, (b) over 50% of the parents had never talked with a teacher by telephone, and (c) most parents reported that they had never been involved in frequent or serious discussions with teachers about their children’s programme or progress. In the present study, the data in Section B3 of the survey questionnaire indicates that 63.7% of respondents rarely (poorly) talked to their child’s teacher in school; 85.3% of respondents rarely (poorly) or never communicated with their child’s teacher on the phone; and 41.4% rarely (poorly) went to a school event (e.g. sports, concert, graduation). The results are startling because although the study by Epstein (1986) was conducted in the U.S. more than thirty years ago, similar findings are still observed in the present study.
Responses to Question 18
The final question in the interview explored what parents expected from the school and what changes they hoped to see. This question was not designed to answer the research questions but to give parents the opportunity to voice their opinions about the education system in a Chinese school.
The comments were from non-Chinese speaking parent’s point of view and it was noted that six respondents or 37.50% were satisfied with their child’s progress and they were not all from high achieving students. Some parents were happy simply with the fact that their children could
communicate on a day to day usage of the Mandarin language as stated by one parent “But I’m proud that all of them can communicate, I sent them to a Chinese school and now they can communicate in Chinese with their friends and even with the shop tauke (owner)” (Parent 15).
This result concurs with the findings in section A2 of the survey questionnaire where 98% of respondents felt that the school is good for their child.
Some parents wanted better communication with the school and more feedback from teachers.
This is also consistent with the responses given section A1 of the survey questionnaire about
‘how often a teacher helps a parent understand the child’s stage of development’ (43.4% stated once a week), ‘tells how the child is doing in school’ (45.9% stated once a week%) and ‘has a meeting to discuss the child’s progress in school’ (42.1% stated once a week). The data shows that parents wanted to engage with the teachers more and get more frequent updates or feedback on the student’s progress and behaviour in school.
Some parents wanted teachers to pay more attention to weak students and encourage their child to speak more and one parent was very practical about the situation in a Chinese school. She mentioned “As an individual it’s a bit difficult (to make requests). Time, I can’t ask for more time in class for Mandarin subjects. I can’t ask for less (few) students per class. So, the only thing I can think of is the seating arrangements in class. Don’t let the non-Chinese speaking students sit together. But I know it’s not fair to ask the teacher to always place my son next to a Chinese speaking student” (Parent 3). Other parents seemed to view the Chinese school system as archaic because it focuses too much on rote learning and less on logical thinking, problem solving, creativity and self exploration. One parent also questioned the need for corporal punishment which is still practised in some schools. One parent suggested reducing co-curricular activities while another suggested the school to engage volunteer teachers from local universities to give students a new experience and a breath of fresh air.
3. Conclusion
The data from the surveys done in Phases 2 and 3 show that parental involvement in children’s education does play a significant role in academic achievement albeit to a certain extent the child’s personality may contribute to the efficacy of second language acquisition. However, parental involvement needs to be further studied and categorised into specific actions or interventions taken by the parents which goes beyond sending children to extra classes outside the school system. Further investigations into what these parents do to support or contribute to their child’s learning is therefore justified to have a more complete understanding of the phenomenon.
References
Abouchaar, A. (2003). The impact of parent engagement on learner success: A digest of research for teachers and parents. GEMS Education, 1, 1-8.
Archer-Banks, D. & Behar-Horenstein, L. (2008). African American parental involvement in their children’s middle school experiences. The Journal of Negro Education, 77(2), 143- 156.
Brown, H.D. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Prentice Hall Regents, New Jersey.
Centre for Public Policy Studies (2012). Vernacular schools in Malaysia: “A heritage to be celebrated or a hindrance to nation building?”, SLI-CPPS Report.
Chavkin, N., & Williams, D. (1993). Minority parents and the elementary school: Attitudes and practices. Families and schools in a pluralistic society, 73-83.
Cheong, H., Chung, K.K.H., Wong, S.W.L., McBride-Chang, C., Penney, T.B., & Ho, S.C.
(2010). Speech perception, metalinguistic awareness, reading and vocabulary in Chinese- English bilingual children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(2), 367-380.
Conley, D.M. & Simon, D. (1993). Testing for personality bias in evaluating agribusiness students. Agribusiness, 9, 119-127.
DePlanty, J., Coulter-Kern, R., Duchane, K.A. (2007). Perceptions of parent involvement in academic achievement. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(6), 361-368, 384.
Domina, T. (2005). Levelling the home advantage: Assessing the effectiveness of parental involvement in elementary school. Sociology of Education, 78, 233-249.
Dörnyei, Z. (2003). Questionnaires in second language research: Construction, administration, and processing. Lawrence Erlbaum, London.
Epstein, J.L. (1986). Parents’ Reactions to Teacher Practices of Parent Involvement. The Elementary School Journal. 86.
Epstein, J.L. (1990). School and family connections: Theory, research and implications for integrating sociologies of education and family. Marriage and Family Review, 15, 99- 126.
Epstein, J.L. (1991). Paths to partnership: What can we learn from federal, state and school initiatives. Phi DeltaKappan, 72, 344-349.
Epstein, J.L. (1992). School and family partnerships. In M. Alkin (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Educational Research (pp. 1139-1512). 6th edn, MacMillan, New York.
Epstein, J.L. (1995). School/family/community partnerships: Caring for the children we share.
Phi Delta Kappan, 76, 701-712.
Epstein, J.L. (2001). School, family and community partnerships: preparing educators and improving schools. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.
Epstein, J.L., & Sanders, MG. (2002). Family, school and community partnerships. In MH.
Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting, practical issues in parenting (pp. 437-507), Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey.
Fan, X., & Chen, M. (2001). Parental involvement and students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), 1-18.
Gelber, A., & Isen, A. (2013). Children’s schooling and parent’s behaviour: Evidence from the Head Start Impact Study. Journal of Public Economics, 101, 25-38.
George, D., & Mensah, D. (2010). Parental involvement in homework for children’s academic success: A study in the Cape Cost Municipality. Academic Leadership, 8(2), 1-5.
Gill, S.K. (2010). Language policy in Malaysia: Reversing direction. Language Policy, 4, 241- 260. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-005-7859-9
Grolnick, W.S., & Slowiaczek, M.L. (1994). Parents’ involvement in children’s schooling: A multidimensional conceptualization and motivational model. Child Development, 65, 237-252.
Haynes, N.M., Corner, J.P. (1996). Integrating schools, families and communities through successful school reform: The school development program. School Psychology Review, 25(4), 501-506.
Hedegaard, M. (2009). Children’s development from a cultural-historical approach: Children’s activity in everyday local settings as foundation for their development. Mind, Culture and Activity, 16(1), 64-82.
Henderson, A.T., & Berla, N. (1994). A new generation of evidence: The family is critical to student achievement, Centre for Law and Education, Washington DC.
Henderson, A.T., & Mapp, K.L. (2002). A new wave of evidence: The impact of school, family and community connections on student achievement – Annual Synthesis, Nasional Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools (SEDL), Austin, Texas.
Hill, N.E., & Taylor, L.C. (2004). Parental school involvement and children’s academic achievement: pragmatics and issues. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(4), 161-164.
Kanbayeva, A., & Boğar, Y. (2014). To what extent does parents’ involvement in middle school influence children’s educational progress? Social and Behavioural Sciences, 152, 529-533.
Keith, P.B., & Lichtman, M.U. (1994). Does parental involvement influence the academic achievement of Mexican-American eighth-graders? Results from the National Education Longitudinal Study. School Psychology Review, 9(4), 256-272.
Kellaghan, T., Sloane, K., Alvarez, B., & Bloom, B. (1993). The home environment and school learning. Jossey-Bass Publishers, New Jersey.
Klugman, K., Lee, J.C., Nelson, S.L. (2012). School co-ethnicity and Hispanic parental involvement. Social Science Research, 41, 1320-1337.
Kohnert, K., Kan, P.F., & Conboy, B.T. (2010). Lexical and grammatical associations in sequential bilingual preschoolers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 684-698.
Laurent, A., & Martinot, C. (2009). Bilingualism and phonological segmentation of speech:
the case of English-French pre-schoolers. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9(1), 20.
McNeal, R.B. (1999). Parental involvement as social capital: Differential effectiveness on science achievement, truancy and drop out. Social Forces, 78, 117-144.
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective-noun strings by pre-school bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 15-32.
O’Brien, M., & Blue, L. (2017). Towards a positive pedagogy: designing pedagogical practices that facilitate positivity within the classroom. Educational Action Research, 1, 1-20.
Phillipson S., Phillipson S.N. (2007). Academic expectation, belief of ability and involvement by parents as predictors of child achievement: A cross-cultural comparison. Educational Psychology, 27, 329-348.
Seitsinger, R.M., & Zera, D. (2002). The importance of professional interfacing. Journal of the International Association of Special Education (JIASE), 4(2), 69-78.
Seitsinger, A.M., Felner, R.D., Brand, S., & Burns, A. (2008). A large scale examination of the nature and efficacy of teachers’ practices to engage parents: assessment, parent contact and student level impact. Journal of School Psychology, 46, 477-505.
Seidenberg, M.S., & McClelland, J.L. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96(4), 523-568.
Swap, S.M. (1993). Developing home-school partnerships: From concepts to practice, Teachers College Press, New York.
Taliaferro, J., Decuir-Gunby, J., & Allen-Eckard, K. (2009). I can see parents being reluctant:
Perceptions of parental involvement using child and family teams in schools. Child and Family Social Work, 278(11), 14-17.
Tyler K.M., Uqdah A.L., Dillihunt, M.L., Beatty-Hazelbaker, R., Conner, T., Gadson, N., Stevens, R. (2008). Cultural discontinuity: Toward a quantitative investigation of a major hypothesis in education. Educational Researcher, 37(5), 280-297.
Vincent, C. (1996). Parents and teachers: Power and participation. Psychology Press, 1.
Vygotsky, L.S. (2004). Fundamentals of defectology (abnormal psychology and learning disabilities): The collective as a factor in the development of the abnormal child. In R.W.
Reiber & D.K. Robinson (Eds.), The essential Vygotsky (pp. 201-219). Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
Wang, M., Perfetti, C.A., & Cheng, C. (2009). The contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology in Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30(23).
Wang, M., Perfetti, C.A., & Liu, Y. (2005). Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition: cross- language and writing system transfer. Cognition, 97, 67-88.
Zick, C.D., Bryant, K.W., Österbacka, E. (2001). Mothers’ employment, parental involvement, and the implications for intermediate child outcomes. Social Science Research, 30, 25- 49.
