Challenges to Parental Involvement in Children’s ESL Learning

Abstract

This paper highlights the findings from the research question, namely: “How do the participating parents work with their children at home?” This is a qualitative study involving seven participating parents of struggling readers of ESL in a Malaysian primary classroom. Interviews were conducted to obtain information from the participants and data was inductively analysed encompassing a co-construction of meaning between the participants’ expressions and researcher’s own interpretation. Two major themes emerged from the data namely involvement; and challenges. In this paper, the results of one of the main themes developed, that is challenges will be discussed. This paper focuses on three types of challenges reported by the participating parents of this study which are “parents and family factors”, “school and teacher factors” and “child factors”. The findings of this study suggest some implications for the system surrounding struggling readers in the Malaysian context including strengthening home-school relationship and establishing educational program for parents.