The familial curriculum : a narrative inquiry of parental involvement within early childhood English language development in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study explores the stories of three diverse HK families and their experiences of engaging in English language early literacy activities with their children within a neoliberal early childhood education system. The study occurred in the 2016-2017 school year and resulted in a total of 36 conversations within the parents’ homes. In this study, I applied a perspective of school and familial curriculum making (Huber, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2011) to inquire into the world travels (Lugones, 1987) of families and their curriculum making experiences. The study drew on Dewey’s (1938) theory of experience, with two criteria of interaction and continuity, while attending to the three “commonplaces” of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality, and place (Clandinin & Connelly, 2006). The research puzzle is positioned to consider the nuanced ways in which parents from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds establish English language literacy skills in their children during early childhood, and at what cost within an entirely privatized education system that is trilingual and biliterate. I am particularly interested in exploring the hidden stories of parents as they walked the fine line between parenting and operating as a facilitator of their children’s English language literacy development. Given the privileged position of English language education within Asia (Tse et al., 2009) I wondered how parents of various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds charted those complex landscapes during early childhood and at what costs to themselves and their families. Accordingly, Hong Kong is positioned as the research site for this study, and it represents an intriguing context around the underlying factors that impact parent’s engagement in English language early literacy activities (ELA) within the home environment using a narrative inquiry framework. Global results on the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Survey (PIRLS) showed HK students had the highest scores regarding reading assessments. However, HK parents had the world’s lowest rates for engaging in early literacy activities (ELA) (i.e., parent-child reading aloud, visiting local libraries, painting, and drawing, singing songs and nursery rhymes, learning letters and numbers) with their children (Mullis, Martin, Drucker, & Foy, 2012). Quantitative data from the PIRLS assessments and research supporting the importance of parent-child engagement in ELA (Siraj‐Blatchford 2010) further supported my decision to inquire into experiences of parents and children within HK due to their globally low assessment scores. Which remained consistent in the 2016 PIRLS assessment results as the research study began (Mullis, Martin, Foy. & Hooper, 2017). Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), is positioned as a methodology and phenomenon within a relational research methodology for the study of experience. Clandinin (2014) explains how we live by the stories of who we are and who we are becoming. Within this context, I explored the identity formation of who parents are, and who they are becoming within their dual roles of parent and teacher in their home learning environment. Connelly & Clandinin (1990) describe narrative inquiry as a study of the ways humans experience the world. Therefore, this study also considers how parents’ narratives are influenced by societal practices of early childhood education within HK’s biliterate and trilingual education system (Chapter 2). Through their narratives we are provided with a snap-shot (Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007) of how their stories continually expand over the course of the school year and how their children’s previous education exposure at home and within HK’s neoliberal early childhood education system largely influences how they later progress through the 2016-2017 school year (Chapters 5-7). Interim participant stories were co-composed and final research texts constructed while analysing collected field texts (including audio recordings of our meetings, journal entries, and exchanges via social media). As I moved from field texts to co-composing narrative accounts and final research texts, I noticed the various common threads that weaved all three families into spaces of shared experiences (Chapter 8). Mainly, the experiences within the families school and curriculum making world’s affected the parents in ways that caused uncertainty and caused concerns about their children’s perceived access to schools within HK. Parent’s ability to navigate through those periods of insecurity were mostly reliant on how well they were positioned socially and economically with other parents and school networks within HK. Based on the research I understand that families live out complicated school and familial curriculum making narratives, that are both testimonials to their resilience and evidence of the harsh inequities within HK’s neoliberal early childhood education system. The purpose of this dissertation is to amplify the largely muted voices of parents from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, then begin a discussion about what their storied experiences might mean within the broader context of HK’s early childhood education system and issues of educational equity and social injustice.