Beyond Cultural Differences: Understanding and Negotiating the Conflict Between Chinese Immigrant Parents and Canadian Teachers

Abstract

Conflict and miscommunication between English as a second language (ESL) parents and teachers has had a major impact on educational policy, but few empirical studies examine it as discourse. This study examines communication between ESL parents and high school ESL teachers in a “Parents’ Night” (PN) event organized to increase understanding of the ESL program. It examines an intercultural communication view and a “dialogue across differences” view, using a more comprehensive systemic functional linguistics view to describe the discourse of the event and locate it in its contexts. It explores explanations for a conflict that occurred, draws implications about the role of each view, and considers prospects for the future development of ESL parent-teacher communication. This study suggests that the intercultural model was very helpful in identifying cultural differences which were sources of misunderstanding. However, not all conflict can be attributed to cultural differences. Taylor’s dialogue/practical reasoning model is therefore an essential addition to any study of intercultural groups which is interested in studying the possibilities of consensus across differences.