‘I try each time- I get shut down’

Children’s influence on parents’ involvement

in children’s community language learning

Ulrike Glinzner

PhD candidate

ulrike.glinzner@flinders.edu.au

Overview

• Clarification of terms• The study • Literature review:

Parent’s involvementInfluences on Parents’ Involvement

• Main Theory• Children’s “invitations”

Clarification of terms

• Minority languages• Community language (CL)

– A language actively used and part of the Australian life (Clyne, 1982)

• Language maintenance• Parental involvement (Gonzalez-DeHass, Willems and

Holbein, 2005; Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994)

• Ethnic/community schools (ESA, 2013; Cardona, Noble & DiBiase, 2008)

The study

Purpose

To find out what influences types and levels of parental home involvement and involvement at the ethnic school in children’s German community language learning (CLL).

To identify opportunities to facilitate parents’ involvement in their children’s CLL.

Rationale

Crucial (Clark, 2000; Fillmore, 2000; Lightbown & Spada, 2006; Pauwels, 2005; Shumow, 2010) Exposure to CLL at home: strong predictor for LM (De

Houwer, 2007)

: active use of CL, receptive skills, need for language, motivation,..

Extremely variable (Clark, 2000; Glinzner, 2010a; Xuesong, 2006)

Gap in literature: explaining factors of influence

Informing practice: how to support parents

Significance

Socio-culturalSocial cultural identity and group membership (Blasi, 2005; Fillmore, 2000; Hamers & Blanc, 1995; Fernando, Valijärvi, & Goldstein, 2010)

Cognitive benefits (Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012) Sustaining better cognitive performance throughout lifespan (Bialystok, 2013)

Economic benefits (Cavallaro, 2005)language skills facilitate studying abroad, work force… (Grosjuan, 2010)

Literature Review

1. Parents’ involvement in children’s CLL

2. Influences on parents’ involvement in children’s CLL

3. Influences on parents’ involvement in children’s education

Parents’ involvement in children’s CLL

– Linguistic behaviour (Döpke, 1986, 1992b; Juan-Garau & Perez-Vidal, 2001)

– Teaching techniques (Döpke, 1986, 1988; Pauwels, 2005)

– Encouragement and assistance (Grosjean, 2010)

– Regulating and resources (Glinzner, 2010a; Pauwels, 2005)

– School involvement (Green et al, 2007; Walker et al, 2005)

Children

• Successful CLM: younger children, social dependence family is very high (Pauwels, 2005)

• “Agents of language shift” (Clyne, 1991, p. 114) • School age children decide the home language (e.g.

Schwartz, 2008; Schuepach, 2006).

• Reasons• Importance of friends over family; centre of social life

becomes school where community language is usually not in use (Pauwels & Winter, 2005)

• Children do not want to be different (Grosjean, 2010) • In adolescence children negotiate their own ethnic

identity (Noro, 2009)

Influences on parents’ involvement in children’s education

• Table I. Parents’ Motivations for Involvement (Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997, revised model 2005 in Green et al., 2007, p. 533)

Main theory

• Figure 1 Model of Triadic Reciprocal Determination (Bandura, 2008)

Self-efficacy

• Influential factor (Bandura, 1986)

• Judgement about own ability to perform a task in one specific domain (Bandura, 1997)

• Parental impact belief (De Houwer 1999)

Example survey questions

Parent’s self-efficacy for helping the child to succeed in school (Walker, Wilkins, Dallaire, Sandler & Hoover-Dempsey, 2005)

item 1 I know how to help my child do well in school.

item 2 I don’t know if I’m getting through to my child (reversed)

item 3I don’t know how to help my child make good grades in school.

item 4 I feel successful about my efforts to help my child learn.

item 5I make a significant difference in my child’s school performance.

Examples

• “Very confident because it’s my mother tongue. So if I would speak to her in German I could explain the grammar to her.”

• “I’m confident enough, it’s not in any way that I feel I don’t know enough. For me can do or could do – there is no problem.”

• “Not very. I have done a basic course but stopped because it was too hard making time for it.”

• “I find it very difficult to teach them something I do not know. I would not know how to teach a child German at home.”

• “The longer I’m away from Germany, the less confident. I’m probably not so confident on the fine grammar, the very particular grammar because I’m not a native speaker.“

(Glinzner, 2010a)

Children’s influence on parents

• Individual qualities (Brooks, 1999)

• Children’s handling of school work (Shumow, 1997)

• Implicit and explicit requests (Hoover-Dempsey & Jones, 1997)

Examples• “...when we first came I spoke all the time German with her and

then after a little while she didn’t answer back to me and then she came with that statement that she didn’t want me to talk German to her anymore. And we believe the reason for that was probably that she felt she was different, she wasn’t quite like all the other children. It stopped then, not because I necessarily listened to her but because she didn’t reply back to me in German and then over time you just slip into English.”

• “He got a bit offended too, he couldn’t understand why she changed.”

• “...we are not confident ... because they are constantly refusing.”• “She has just turned into an unpleasant child.”• “...when we went to Germany nearly 4 years ago, they actually said

we’d like to keep on speaking German. And it’s part of their conversation now.”

• “They are quite proud that they have both nationalities.”(Glinzner, 2010a)

Child invitations(Glinzner, 2010a)

Acknowledgements

My supervisors

Assoc. Prof David CurtisDr Marietta RossettoDr Mirella Wyra

References• Blasi, M. J. (2005). Parents Can Guide Children through the World of Two Languages. Childhood Education, 81(3), 164.• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.• Bandura, A. (2008). An agentic perspective on positive psychology. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Positive psychology: Exploring the best in

people (Vol. 1, pp. 167-196). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company.• Bialystok, E., Craik, F.I.M., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: Consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16,

240-250.• Cavallaro, F. (2005). Language maintenance revisited: An Australian perspective. Bilingual Research Journal, 29(3), 561.• Clark, B. A. (2000). First- and Second-Language Acquisition in Early Childhood. Issues in Early Childhood Education: Curriculum,

Teacher Education, & Dissemination of Information, 9.• Clyne, M. 1982. Multilingual Australia. Melbourne: River Seine.• Clyne, M. (1985). Language maintenance and language shift: Some data from Australia. Language of inequality, 36, 195.• Clyne, M. (1991). Community languages: the Australian experience. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.• DeHouwer, A. (1999). Two or More Languages in Early Childhood: Some General Points and Practical Recommendations. ERIC

Digest: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, Washington, DC.• Döpke, S. (1986). Discourse Structures in Bilingual Families. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 7(6), 493-505.• ESB. (2010). Ethnic Schools Annual Report 2009/2010. • Fillmore, L. W. (2000). Loss of family languages: Should educators be concerned? Theory into Practice, 39(4), 203- 210. • Glinzner, U. C. (2010a). Motivational and contextual influences on parents' home involvement in children's learning of a minority

language in an ethnic school. Unpublished M.Ed. dissertation, Flinders University, Adelaide.• Gonzalez-DeHass, A. R., Willems, P. P., & Holbein, M. F. (2005). Examining the relationship between parental involvement and

student motivation. Educational Psychology Review, 17(2), 99-123.• Green, C. L., Walker, J. M., Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Sandler, H. M. (2007). Parents' Motivations for Involvement in Children's

Education: An Empirical Test of a Theoretical Model of Parental Involvement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(3), 532-544.

References

• Grolnick, W. S., & Slowiaczek, M. L. (1994). Parents' Involvement in Children's Schooling: A Multidimensional Conceptualization and Motivational Model. Child Development, 65(1), 237-252.

• Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: life and reality: Harvard University Press.• Hamers, J., & Blanc, M. (2000). Bilinguality and bilingualism (2nd ed.). Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.• Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Sandler, H. M. (1997). Why do parents become involved in their children's education? Review of

Educational Research, 67(1), 3-42.• Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Jones, K. P. (1997). Parental Role Construction and Parental Involvement in Children's Education.

Paper presented at the Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association. • Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., Walker, J. M., Sandler, H. M., Whetsel, D., Green, C. L., Wilkins, A. S., et al. (2005a). Why do parents

become involved? Research findings and implications. Elementary School Journal, 106(2), 105-130.• Juan-Garau, M., & Perez-Vidal, C. (2001). Mixing and pragmatic parental strategies in early bilingual acquisition. Journal of Child

Language, 28(01), 59-86.• Pauwels, A. (2005). Maintaining the community language in Australia: Challenges and roles for families. International Journal of

Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8(2-3), 124.• Schüpbach, D. (2006). "It's something that's just faded away": how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes

sense of language shift. International journal of the sociology of language, 2006(180), 89-104.• Schwartz, M. (2008). Exploring the Relationship between Family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge Among

Second Generation Russian Jewish Immigrants in Israel. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 29(5), 400 – 418.• Shumow, L. (2010). Parental Involvement at home. In D. B. Hiatt-Michael (Ed.), Promising practices to support family involvement

in schools. Greenwich, CT: IAP Information Age Publishing; US.• Walker, J. M., Wilkins, A. S., Dallaire, J. R., Sandler, H. M., & Hoover-Dempsey, K. V. (2005). Parental involvement: Model

revision through scale development. Elementary School Journal, 106(2), 85-104.• Xuesong, G. (2006). Strategies Used by Chinese Parents to Support English Language Learning: Voices of "Elite" University

Students. RELC Journal: A Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 37(3), 285-298.

Thank you.