Examining Parents' Views on Parental Involvement in Preschool English Teaching

Abstract

This study aims to examine parents' views on parental involvement in preschool English language teaching. Today, as parents realize their roles, they have started to play a more active role in their children's educational process. In this period when children need their parents' support the most, parents need to turn this situation into an opportunity and contribute to their children's foreign language acquisition process. For this reason, this study examined the views of parents on their participation in this process in the preschool period, which is considered to be very important in terms of foreign language acquisition. It is predicted that this study will shed light on parents' thoughts about their participation in the preschool foreign language education process and will benefit the studies to be carried out to make English language teaching more effective in the preschool period. In this study, the case study design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used to obtain parents' views on their involvement in preschool English language teaching. A total of 15 parents, consisting of eight fathers and seven mothers, whose children received preschool English education in different schools in Afyonkarahisar province in Turkey, voluntarily participated in the study. In this study, the parents' opinions about their involvement in English language teaching were obtained through semi-structured interview forms. As a result of the study, it was found that although almost all the parents adopted the view that parental involvement was necessary when the situation of supporting their children's English learning at home was examined, it was found that they could not support their children in their English learning process due to limited time, insufficient English level, the view that school alone is sufficient and similar reasons. It is concluded that parents who thought that their English level was insufficient for their children's participation in the English language learning process, remained passive in this process and were not informed about how they could participate in the foreign language teaching process of their children.