Engaging with Chinese Ethnic Minority Children’s Voices Regarding Parental Involvement

Abstract

China, with a population of 125 million people, has 55 ethnic minorities. A large
number of Chinese ethnic minority children lack confidence and motivation, and
underperform in English as a subject. An effective way to narrow the educational
achievement gap between the Hans and ethnic minority families is to enhance
parental involvement, which is currently inadequate. Therefore, this qualitative
study, based on interviews with 12 sixth-grade children aged 11 to 12 years in
Guizhou’s ethnic minority regions, examines the involvement of parents in the
school and home with regard to the learning of English among ethnic minority
children. A thematic analysis was conducted on the data, and the findings reflected
that the degree of parental involvement in the school was largely event-driven and
responsive, while in the home, it was limited and intermittent. The paper
highlights parents’ supportive practices and potential difficulties of school and
home involvement. From the data, a quadripartite representation of parental
involvement as a support system is proposed for more school-parent and parent-
teacher collaborations to improve the achievement of ethnic minority children in
English learning. The implications of assisting ethnic minority parents in
overcoming obstacles to both school and home involvement are considered.
However, due to the relatively small sample size, the findings should be
interpreted within the context of the Chinese ethnic minorities in this study. The
paper concludes by suggesting that to elicit the voices of ethnic minority children,
it is necessary to include the voices of their parents and teachers within the
contexts in which they are found.