Teacher perception of parents' involvement in their children’s literacy and their reading instructions in Kuwait EFL primary school classrooms

Abstract

There is an increasing awareness of the benefits that accrue from parental involvement in a student's academic learning and of the impact that teachers have on programs regarding such parental involvement. This study seeks to investigate the views of the teachers working in Kuwait‟s public schools regarding the effectiveness of parental involvement in their children's‟ learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in primary school. Epstein's Overlapping Spheres of influence framework (2002), provides the conceptual framework to address the study questions. Data collection was driven by the case study methodology. The data were triangulated from: 1) face-to-face interviews with 33 English language teachers having at least 5 years' experience in teaching English in a primary school; 2) documental analysis of the teachers' backgrounds; and, 3) observing and tracking the reading activities included in the Kuwaiti curriculum that is used in the EFL classroom. Data collected from the documents and from the face–to-face interviews were analyzed using (Maxwell, 1996) strategies for analyzing qualitative data as that it helped prevent confusion. Three main themes emerged from the data. First, teachers believed that parental involvement in their children's preparatory learning of a foreign language was valuable, although the level of parental involvement varied, depending on the locality and the educational level of the parents. Second, teachers offered various suggestions to promote the parents' home reading activities with their children. Third, the teachers were fully aware of the deficiency in the reading skills of the student‟s in Kuwait's public schools. However, they did have insights and suggestions to overcome such challenges.