Parental Perceptions Of Children's Literacy And Bilingualism- The Case Of Ethiopian Immigrants In Israel

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 30, No. 2, March 2009, 111
126

Parental perceptions of children’s literacy and bilingualism: the case of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel Anat Stavansa,b*, Elite Olshtainc, and Gil Goldzweigd a Research Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University, Mount Scoupus, Jerusalem, Israel; bEnglish Department, Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba, Israel; cResearch Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel; dTel-Aviv Jaffa Academic College, Tel Aviv, Israel

(Received 3 January 2008; accepted 9 June 2008) The present study describes factors affecting the home and school literacy patterns in the Ethiopian immigrant community in Israel. Parents were asked to complete a questionnaire evaluating their child’s development, literacy, schooling, and language proficiency (L1 and L2). The results indicate that while non-Ethiopian and Ethiopian parents seek the same future for their child there are significant differences in the means to bridge between home and school literacy patterns. Ethiopian immigrant parents engage in their child’s educational and social life until first grade. Once schooling begins, these parents disengage from the child’s educational needs and the generational worlds begin to part. Such disengagement is often accompanied by relinquishing the maintenance of the first language, its culture and traditions in favour of a yet inappropriate second language devoid of ethnic or cultural values to be acquired. We contend that mutual respect and interaction between the two literacy traditions could enhance both child’s and parent’s confidence and well being contributing greatly to literacy enhancement and development. Keywords: biliteracy; immigrants; language acquisition; education policy; multilingualism

Introduction When immigrants cross borders, they also cross cultural, emotional and behavioural boundaries. Life changes, expectations change, roles change and personal perceptions are in conflict. These changes often lead to lack of stability and lack of personal confidence, affecting family life and especially child
parent interactions. Immigrant families by definition, go through a transition period in the new community, while attempting to integrate and become part of the new social and cultural context. The children face the need to bridge between the home culture and the outside culture, the home language and the outside language and the educational and socialisation processes at home and the ones imposed by the host community. Early immigration theory viewed conflict within the immigrant community as a temporary expression of dislocation in the normal state of host societies (Castles and Miller 1993; Heisler 1992). More recent approaches to immigration refer to *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0143-4632 print/ISSN 1747-7557 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01434630802307916 http://www.informaworld.com

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‘international migration systems’
proposing a dynamic view emphasising the extreme diversification among cotemporary immigrants (Massey et al. 1993). Some of these groups are identified as coming from non-Western backgrounds where oral literacy is central; where Western education and schooling of the parents is limited and where family skills that were relevant and important in the original culture become irrelevant in the new environment. In such cases, the children seem to walk a more precarious bridge connecting the home culture with the new culture. The Ethiopian families, who immigrated to Israel in the early 1990s, represent an instrumental example for the study of social and cultural integration of an immigrant community with low socio-economic status, limited schooling and Non-Western oral or literate cultural traditions. Children from such background, even those born in the new community, have to cope with biculturalism/bilingualism of Amharic/Tigris as their home language; Hebrew as the dominant language of the host community; and scholastic literacy requirements at school. The Ethiopian family exhibits mostly oral literacy in the home language while school requires literacy in Hebrew, similar to any Western schooling context. To what extent do parents perceive their activities at home as contributing to schooling in the new community? Growing bodies of research points to the importance of providing early learning experiences that stimulate children’s literacy and language development. Home literacy environment, and more specifically parents, contribute significantly to the child’s level of literacy and school readiness (Heath 1982; Snow 1991). Exposure to literacy-driven events carry interactive communicative opportunities (Bruner 1983; Vygotsky 1962, 1978) in: questions and answers, directives, explanations, instruction, commands, affectionate statements and narratives such as regular recounts or natural dinner talk exchanges (Blum-Kulka 1993, 1997; Blum-Kulka and Snow 1993, 2002; Minami and McCabe 1995; Snow 1994; Stavans 1996, 2001; Wigglesworth and Stavans 2001). These interactions are different within the immigrant group and across the dominant culture
a difficulty immigrant children must overcome. ‘Walking the walk’ from home to school literacy is not only the task and responsibility of the child but also of the institutions
both formal and informal
in charge of the child’s education. Each of which partakes a different
albeit crucially important
function in the child’s education. Often, among Ethiopian immigrants children, scholastic achievements vis a vis the national ‘standards’ count more heavily than the characteristics with which these children enter the formal educational system. To this end, a close analysis and understanding of parental perceptions and the position of their children’s education and bilingualism is called for. Studies of immigrant families suggest that parental social cognition, beliefs and norms, expectations, rules and child rearing ideologies affect both the maintenance of the original culture (Caudill and Weinstein 1969; Frankel and Roer-Borenstein 1982; Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Roer-Strier 2000) and the integration process into the new culture. Research on literacy development stressed the advantages of young children in families involved in the child’s literacy acquisition (Duranti and Ochs 1997) with special emphasis on communicative competence through authentic language use in family discourse (Hemphill and Snow 1996). Informal language acquisition (including incipient literacy acquisition) occurs mostly at home while formal literacy acquisition occurs mostly at school, forming a discontinuous development exacerbated in culturally and linguistically different group.

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It is our contention that many of these differences could be bridged more easily if we relate to parents’ descriptions as accurate contributions for policymakers, educators, and other professionals (Barton 1994; Dickinson and DeTemple 1998; Snow and Dickinson 1991; Taylor 1994). Insights from parental reports are far reaching in that they provide information unavailable by the child either through performance on tests or through teacher evaluations. Such studies inspired the present investigation focusing on parental perceptions of home and school literacy in light of a multilingual and multicultural environment. We make three assumptions about the child’s learning process: first, children do not need permission to learn
they will do so naturally. Second, children are not passive learners
they actively interact with their environment. Third, the development of language and literacy is a multifaceted endeavour, not only for individuals with a single language, but also for individuals who acquire more than one language. Immigrant communities coping with bilingualism and biliteracy: the Ethiopian community For any immigrant group, successful integration into the new community usually means the acquisition of the new language, the development of literacy skills in that new language, and an ongoing acculturation into the new society. Therefore, successful integration is often affected by factors related to notions of bilingualism, biliteracy and biculturalism. The Ethiopian families who immigrated to Israel approximately 15 years ago have usually maintained their first language Amharic or Tigris while learning Hebrew. The children born into these families are exposed to some degree of bilingualism from the start. It is important to gain better insight into the educational, communicative and linguistic practices common among these families if we want to nurture and foster academic/school literacy in the second generation. Nearly 80,000 Ethiopians had immigrated to Israel by 2001. Most of the immigrants came to Israel in two major uplifts called Moses and Salomon missions. The vast majority of the immigrants come from the Gundar or Tigrinia regions of Ethiopia, from rural areas. Most Ethiopian immigrants had no formal education and could not read nor write Amharic (the majority’s native language). Unlike previous immigratory groups, the Ethiopian seemed to endure a severe culture shock that should not have been underestimated (Weil 1989, 1998). Some had to bridge a knowledge gap spanning hundreds of years adjusting to a new life in a modern, technologically advanced society (Sever 1997). Beyond the educational gaps there were also more basic adjustments such as a new climate, a new language, unfamiliar religious rituals and a very different status for women. Professionally, the Ethiopians were equipped with vocational trades: the vast majority (92% of the men from the villages) were farmers; the remainder (8%) worked as weavers, carpenters, metal-workers or other commercial trades. Of particular interest is the social organisation which restricts the individual to learn the ‘trade’ of the family or the community into which s/he is born. Among urban residents, there were vocations such as drivers, teachers and soldiers (Ben-Ezer 1992; UNESCO
International Literacy Day Report 2001). The distribution in Table 1 indicates that this community of immigrants is a ‘young’ community with over 85% of its people below 45 years of age. This intriguing fact seemed a promise for a successful and swift integration, but looking at the

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Table 1.

Family and educational background of the Ethiopian immigrant child*.

Parent’s education No education Education 1
8 years Education 13 years Single-parent families (%) No earner (%) Father over age 65 (%) Father over age 45 (%)

Ethiopian children

Total non-Ethiopian children

61.0 20.0 5.6 18 41 11 49

3.3 14.7 35.0 10 9 0.5 24

*Central Bureau of Statistics & Ministry of Education Report # 4/2006: Immigrant Pupils in Educational Institutions 2003/2004.

‘texture’ of this community, unique features reveal the Ethiopian family structure and size: (1) (2) (3) (4)

some 60% of families have five or more children (ages 0
18); 20% of the families are single parent; a large percentage of single-parent families have three or more children; a large percentage of the children have a father over age 65.

With a limited educational background, approximately 10% of its members had between five and 12 years of schooling. Upon arrival in Israel, they were placed in 12
18-month long language programmes (Golan-Cook, Horowitz, and Shefatia 1987; Nezer and Polani 1988; Schuster 1997). Their L2 (Hebrew) proficiency is best characterised as: (1) the child’s and family background affected the acquisition of Hebrew; (2) nearly 45% of the parents cannot converse fluently in Hebrew even today; and (3) nearly 75% are unable to read or write in Hebrew. The unique situation of the Ethiopian community has required careful rethinking of the absorption practices in Israel. Three main components have developed during the last 10 years to enhance the integration of the Ethiopian community: (1) a special national programme for Ethiopian immigrants including basic entitlements; (2) national programmes for weak students; and (3) special programmes at the local level, run by a variety of organisations. These activities have resulted in a higher number of Ethiopian students in high schools, increased eligibility for matriculation certificates and increased enrolments in institutions of higher education (Central Bureau of Statistics & Ministry of Education Report # 4/2006). The aim of this study is to describe Ethiopian immigrant parents’ perceptions with regards to bilingualism and biliteracy, their child’s formal education (schooling)/ informal education (after school programmes and activities) and their child’s literacy development. We assume that such perceptions shed light on the child’s starting point drawing on the home ‘literate and cultural capital’. To this end we asked two main questions. First, what are the indexes that characterise the Ethiopian parents’ view towards their child’s scholastic literacy development, more specifically we ask: (1) do Ethiopian parents perceive their child’s language and literacy development at different ages 3
9 similarly to non-Ethiopian parents of the same socio-economic level? (2) do Ethiopian parents assess home activities as contributing to their children’s literacy development? (3) do Ethiopian parents value equally or

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differently home and school literacy-driven activities as contributions to their child’s development? and (4) do Ethiopian parents perceive of their child’s bilingualism as an asset or an hindrance in their child’s literacy development? Thus, we were interested in revealing the relations between these indexes as a means to predict these families’ home literacy patterns. The study Participants The participants were 90 mothers (here forth we relate to them as parents) to children at ages ranging from 3 to 7 years, of which 68 were Ethiopian Amharic-speaking parents who used Amharic (L1) in interactions at home and in the community. A small comparative counterpart group consisted of 22 non-Ethiopian Hebrewspeaking parents for whom the language of interaction at home was Hebrew. Inclusion criteria for participant selection were: (1) geographic
namely participants who come from the same low-income neighbourhood in the outskirts of Rehovot and Natanya (two cities in Central Israel); (2) Ethiopian versus non-Ethiopian groups; (3) participants who have children in the formal educational system. Five groups of parents participated as follows in Table 2. Overall, the Ethiopian parents report having four years of formal education with three years in Ethiopia and one year of retraining in Israel. Non-Ethiopian parents averaged approximately 10 years of formal education. The non-Ethiopian participants have a higher income (25% more) than the Ethiopian participants and the number of single-parent families among the Ethiopian participants is twice that of the non-Ethiopian cohort. All children in both groups were attending educational frameworks at the time of data collection. The Ethiopian families have a length of residence in Israel of between 13 and 15 years. These families consist of one or both parents and an average of four children. Most of these immigrant parents had an urban non-academic vocation (secretary, postman, etc.) prior to immigration, and their professional status was dramatically impoverished after immigration, resulting in a large number of unemployed members. Table 2.

Participating parent groups.

Parent’s age (average) 32;10 34;4 33;9 36;10 33;4

Target child age (range) 3;0
3;11 4;0
4;11 5;0
5;11 6;0
6;11 7;0
8;0

Procedure Each parent was assigned a group based on the child’s age. While most participants had more than one child, they were asked to relate to all tasks and procedure ONLY in reference to the specific child we targeted as determining the ‘child age group’. For

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example, a parent of three children of different ages was asked to perform all tasks in regards to the child we targeted (one per parent). A questionnaire was administered to both groups
non-Ethiopian and Ethiopian parents. The questionnaire gathered demographic information, information about daily routines, uses of literacy in the home, home
school relationships, and parental views on the child’s literacy, multilingualism and overall development. For the purposes of comparison, the non-Ethiopian parents completed a questionnaire that was adapted to the ‘monolingual’ situation while the Ethiopian parents received a questionnaire that related to their ‘bilingual’ setting. In other words, the question of ‘how many books do you have at home?’ for the Ethiopian parent was specified ‘in Hebrew’ and ‘in Amharic’ as two subsets while for the non-Ethiopian group there was no subset. One parent in each household participated in completing the questionnaire. Data collection took place either at the family’s home, the community centre or the library. The participants were recruited by a member of the community following a screening and referrals of teachers, and community leaders. Measures The questionnaire consisted of: (1) a socio-demographic section (age, socio-economic status, education, immigration information); (2) a developmental section (items concerning the child’s early development, growth, activities, language, care, etc.); (3) a socialisation section (questions about kinds and frequencies of family activities with the child); (4) preliteracy section (items regarding stages of reading and writing activities, pretend reading and writing activities, literacy practices in the home towards the child and by the child towards other family members, access and presence of literate material in the home, etc.); (5) formal and informal education section (frameworks attended by the child in terms of content of activities such as after school programmes, length of exposure to these frameworks and activities, expectations of parent for their child’s future, etc.); and (6) multilingualism section (patterns of language use in the home, attitudes towards L1 and L2 within and outside the educational system, etc.). Data analysis Drawing on the theoretical assumptions and seeking answers to our research questions, nine theoretical indexes were construed. The indexes were: normative development; the pros and cons towards the child’s bi/monolingualism; the child’s socialisation habits; pre/home-literacy practices; evaluation of the child’s engagement in formal educational systems; evaluation of the child’s engagement in informal educational frameworks; value attributed to the educational system; family income; and family entertainment practices. Each index constituted of a score that was calculated from the sum of scores availed for each relevant question to the index. For example, the developmental index included questions like ‘when did your child first walk?’. The scales provided for weight differences between the possible answers so that a desired answer (with a literacy focus) would have a higher score. For example, the possible answers to the question: ‘what sort of play activities does your child engage in?’ would yield an answer ‘books, musical instruments, etc.’ scoring three points as opposed to an answer ‘ball, dolls and cars’ scoring one point.

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The analysis consisted of: (1) a MANOVA was conducted in order to compare all indexes between both groups’
Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian parents
to establish similarities and differences with respect to each group’s perception of their child’s language and literacy development at different ages 3
9; (2) we then proceeded to focus on the Ethiopian group using separate ANOVA in order to compare differences between the parental assessments in each age
directed group according to: (a) home activities contributing to the child’s literacy development? (b) home and school literacy-driven activities as contributing to their child’s development?; and (c) perceptions of the child’s bilingualism viewed as an asset or a hindrance in literacy development? and (3) we calculated Pearson’s correlations between child’s literacy, education, socialisation and multilingualism indexes within each age group in order to predict these families’ home literacy patterns.

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

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Results and discussion To establish the home
school literacy interface we set out to describe the home literacy onset of children at different ages, knowing that the school literacy expectations are different and even unattainable for the Ethiopian immigrant population. To this end we chose to compare and contrast the Ethiopian and nonEthiopian populations in the same neighbourhood (our research question (1) above). Significant differences were found between the non-Ethiopian Hebrew speaking parents and the Ethiopian Amharic
Hebrew speaking immigrant parents. Figure 1 shows the average score for each index in each group. Figure 1 shows that on all indexes, except the overall educational system and the development assessment, the non-Ethiopian parents assess their children higher than the Ethiopian parent. Ethiopian parents tend to value the educational system (both formal and informal) and their child’s normative development as important, better and reliable compared to the non-Ethiopian parents. The non-Ethiopian parents tend to socialise more and to consume more extra-communitarian ‘entertainment’ than the Ethiopian parents
a finding explained by both cultural and income factors. On all indexes
except these two
there is statistically significant difference between the parents in both groups (Table 3). This finding leads to question whether the type of home-literacy patterns in the Ethiopian family supports or hinders the child’s literacy development expected by the schooling system in Israel.

Index ethp parent

Figure 1.

Isl parent

Ethiopian immigrant and Veteran Israeli parents’ scores on indexes.

118 Table 3.

A. Stavans et al. Comparison between Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian parents*. Ethiopian

Developmental Bilingualism Socialisation Pre/Literacy Informal education Formal education Whole educational system Income Entertainment

Non-Ethiopian

Anova

Mean

Std

Mean

Std

F(1,73)

pB

8.61 5.04 20.69 47.98 4.55 3.55 10.01 5.55 5.33

0.54 0.88 4.50 12.88 0.96 2.62 2.49 1.36 2.87

8.16 6.93 26.46 64.56 5.00 4.50 9.95 6.80 8.25

1.09 1.36 5.14 13.05 0.79 1.86 2.10 1.96 2.86

5.57 50.07 22.31 24.13 3.59 2.23 0.01 9.63 15.25

0.0209 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0621 0.1397 0.9211 0.0027 0.0002

*Manova F(9,65)12.95, pB0.0001.

Ethiopian parents report on bilingualism, formal / informal education and literacy The child’s development Most parents rate their child’s development as normative and higher as the child grows older. All parents report on full term
natural birth of a healthy child. All parents recall the child’s first words as being content words in Hebrew such as father, mother, etc. (very few recall early words in Amharic). Parents also report that the child’s favourite home activities are engaging in play (with toys, constructions, and physical games such as ball and hide-and-seek) mostly with their parents and siblings and occasionally with neighbours. For free quality time with their child, parents prefer to read (among parents of children at the age of three and five) or play (at the age of four and six). They tend to rank their child at average or above average performance when compared to other cohorts. Home income and socialisation Home income is closely related to the child’s socialisation patterns and informal educational frameworks. A higher income at home enables (though not guarantee) socialisation patterns by exposure and contact with peers, relatives and cohorts. At the same time informal education provides an institutionalised platform for socialisation in the neighbourhood. These philanthropic frameworks provide activities geared to the Ethiopian community for a small fee intended to engage the community. In early childhood, parents report more socialisation activities as part of the child’s daily routines. However, at six socialisation activities drop, school becomes a central part of the routines leaving little time for extra scholastic activities. At this age parents regard school as ‘real’ learning and the child is expected to fully engage in it. Socialisation’s ‘enrichment’ function is no longer perceived as the parent’s responsibility, and parents relinquish the ‘educator’ function to what they regard as the ‘authority’
the formal school system. Most families’ income ranges between 3000 and 5000 ISh. per month (nearly 700
1100 U$) and families with young children have a lower income (salary or social security and welfare allowances are common to larger families with more children). This leaves no ‘extras’ for socialisation activities.

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Home-pre / literacy practices Parents in all age groups report that their children engage in writing in Hebrew, at home, addressed to family members, with contents varying from names, single words, stories, signs and greeting cards. When engaged in ‘pretend writing’ activities, the younger children provide explanations for their writing while school age children dismiss their product. Most parents report that their children recognise the name and sound of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For the younger group, children are reported to only recognise the letters of their name. There is no writing in Amharic in any age group. For example, parents were asked whether their child could pretend that s/he is writing (See Table 4). Table 4.

Does your child pretend s/he is writing? (% of parents responses)

3e 4e 5e 6e 7e

Yes

No

92.3 100.0 80.0 78.6 54.5

7.7 0.0 20.0 21.4 45.4

e

Ethiopian parents.

Pretend writing is a voluntary activity suggesting not only awareness to the writing system and its meaning but also the incipient signs of literacy. Yet, at the age of six, fewer Ethiopian parents compared to non-Ethiopian parents report that their child engages in pretend writing. One explanation is that pretend writing is no longer necessary when the child learns to use ‘real writing’. However, fewer Ethiopian (than non-Ethiopian) parents report that their children engage in pretend writing (not only at six but later too) reinforcing their limited involvement in the child’s language and literacy development during formal schooling. As for reading, all parents report their child engages in self-pretend reading. Young children engage in pretend reading both with their parents (in both Hebrew and Amharic but mostly in Hebrew due to shortage in printed texts in Amharic) and with siblings: while older children engage in pretend reading (in Hebrew) addressed to their younger siblings (See Table 5). Table 5.

Does your child ‘pretend’ to read to . . . (% of parents’ responses) Self

3e 4e 5e 6e 7e

Others

Yes

No

Yes

No

92.3 92.9 80.0 71.4 54.5

7.7 0.0 6.6 7.1 0.0

92.3 92.9 86.7 78.6 36.4

7.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 18.2

Who Parents Siblings Cohorts Objects Other adults 46.1 35.7 20.0 14.3 0.0

23.1 42.9 46.7 57.1 9.1

7.7 0.0 13.2 0.0 18.2

0.0 7.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

e

Ethiopian parents.

Fewer parents of Ethiopian (compared to non-Ethiopian) school age children report that their child engages in pretend reading either to him/herself or others. Reading street signs is not typically regarded as ‘reading’ by the parents. When asked

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whether they or their children attempt to read signs on the street (in either or both Amharic or Hebrew), parents report that the children do not engage in reading signs but do attempt reading advertisements for toys. The 3
5 years old ‘pretend-read’ comics, and the 5
6 years old read newspapers and wrappings on products. Parents read to their children in Hebrew only at varying frequency (for young ages every day, the older groups
six and above
once a week mostly on the weekend) (See Table 6). Older siblings in the household are reported to read to the child because ‘they read and speak better Hebrew’. There are less than 10 books in Hebrew at homes of preschool age children and 10
25 books in Hebrew at school age children’s homes. Books are not purchased but received as gifts or borrowed from library, school or family. L1 and L2 maintenance Patterns of literacy rely on language socialisation and use in any speech community
and perhaps even more so in multilingual and multicultural communities. Among immigrant populations, there is great tension between acquiring the L2 and maintaining the L1 culture and language simultaneously. This tension is borne out of the need to ‘be part’ of the new society which enables a better future and social mobility. These needs place a burden in homes where parents face ‘existence’ challenges and the need to maintain a normal life at home, bridging between the familiar ‘old’ and the unfamiliar ‘new’. In this respect, the Ethiopian parents are not different from other immigrant groups in their attitudes towards L1 and L2, and their perceptions of their child’s bilingualism as an asset or a hindrance to literacy development (research question ‘4’). Table 6. How often do you read to/with your child something in Hebrew and or Amharic? (%of parents responding) Hebrew Never 3e 4e 5e 6e 7e

Amharic

Everyday 1
3 times/ 1
5 times/ Never Everyday 1
3 times/ 1
5 times/ week month week month

7.6 7.1 6.6 7.1 0

69.2 50 26.7 28.6 45.8

7.6 28.6 60 42.8 27.3

0 0 0 0 0

0 21.4 26.7 21.4 9.1

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

e

Ethiopian parents.

Parents’ attitude towards the importance of maintaining L1 and promoting L2 varies across the ages. At the age of three, there is greater support for L1 maintenance. Perhaps because the parent does not command the L2 or because the natural affectionate child directed speech is in the caregiver’s L1. From incipient engagement in the educational system, preference for L1 over L2 decreases when parents realise that the child enters an ‘all L2’ framework. This gap in attitude towards the two languages widens at the age of five and even more at six with incipient exposure to formal ‘L2
only’ reading and writing. At 7 parents feel stronger about the need to enhance L2 and forgo L1 because the latter hampers the child’s achievements. Independent of their child, Ethiopian immigrant parents across all ages favour multilingualism and L1 maintenance and regard L2 less favourably.

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In/Formal education Parents’ attitudes towards the educational systems influence not only their child’s academic achievement and development but also their interactions at home. Parents report that they are in touch with the school teacher and regard the educational system as the primary source of their child’s knowledge, opportunity for socialisation, and a ‘safe place to leave their child’ while at work or leisure. Generally speaking, parents regard the child’s ‘education’ (i.e. in the sense of expanding knowledge) as the duty of the formal educational system in which they are not actively involved. They are happy to keep in touch with the school authority (usually the teacher) for procedural purposes, make the choice of which school to send their child to, and delegate the academic support to after-school enrichment programmes or to older family members (mostly siblings who are or were schooled in Israel). Table 7 shows the percentage of parents reporting on involvement in their child’s formal education. Table 7.

Do you attend PTA meetings? (% of parents responding)

Age group 3 4 5 6 7

Ethiopian

Non-Ethiopian

76.9 100.0 100.0 78.6 63.6

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Like other parents, Ethiopian parents value education and expect their children to graduate from school and university, pursue an academically driven practical career (i.e. lawyer, doctor, nurse, teacher, etc.), some expect their children to have a ‘celebrity’ type of career (i.e. singer, politician, etc.), and few expect their children to make their own choices. Table 8 shows the percentages of parents estimating their child’s educational future. Table 8.

Do you think your child will complete . . . (% of parents responding)

Dropout No high school Yes high school University Don’t know 3e 4e 5e 6e 7e

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

15.38 0.00 13.33 14.28 18.18

84.61 92.85 86.66 85.71 63.63

0.00 7.14 0.00 0.00 18.18

e

Ethiopian parents.

Yet, when asked what their child wants to do, most parents report on vocationally driven jobs (pilot, football player, sculptor, etc.) convinced that the child will end up being what the child has chosen.

Child’s literacy, education, and multilingualism as predictors of home literacy patterns Correlations between the indexes relate to parental perceptions, attitudes and approaches to their child’s development of literacy, education, socialisation and

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multilingualism. These correlations, while not establishing causality, provide a basis for formulating a profile of literacy patterns across ages within these immigrant families. Parents to younger children maintain a bilingual setting because the child is perceived as someone in need of ‘existence’ care. At that age, parents are tuned into the development of their child (often viewed as an infant) until reaching the formal framework (nursery) where the child begins to show and demand ‘childlike’ traits. At four (Figure 2 shown in ‘a’), when the impact of the formal framework is more noticeable, parents become more zealous of their language and tradition
‘home’ culture
and the value of the child’s multilingualism is significantly higher than at any other age (r0.59). At five, with exposure to the different social institutions providing services for the well being of their child and steering their parenting style into a ‘division of labour’, the formal authorities are granted the ‘teaching’ responsibility while the parents assume the ‘raising’ responsibility for their child. That is why they are less keen on fostering multilingualism as this may ‘tamper’ with the formal educational system’s responsibility. Parents of the older group are more concerned with the child’s academic success (which may be at risk) as reflected in tests (scores) driven by academic standards and insensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity. Figure 2 (shown by ‘b’) shows a correlation between the preliteracy and development indices. Again, parents rate their child’s literacy and development higher up to formal schooling when instruction of reading and writing is introduced. A close look at the correlations between the preliteracy and multilingualism indices shows the bridges between home and school literacy. Three- and four-yearold children (shown in Figure 2 by ‘c’) are more exposed to bilingual contexts at home favouring L1 language and literacy enhancement and maintenance (r0.55 and r0.59, respectively). At five the multilingualism at home and preliteracy abilities are more closely related. From first grade on there is not a strong correlation between multilingualism at home and literacy enhancement perhaps because parents are no longer the sole evaluators of their child’s literacy and they feel inept to do so. Our findings show that most Ethiopian parents rate their child’s development as normative and their assessment is higher as the child grows older. In addition, Ethiopian parents tend to preserve multilingualism in the home from the child’s infancy until preschool. Preschool and first grade are pivotal ages in the parents’ a

100

Score %

80

b

c c

60 40 20 0 Three

Four

Five

Six

+Seven

Child's Age Group Development

Multilingualism

Pre-Literacy

Figure 2. Parental assessment of the child’s development, preliteracy and their attitude towards multilingualism across age groups.

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attitude towards languages and learning. On track towards academic literacy and the transition into the written practices, parents regard multilingualism as less valuable. In summary, these findings show that the Ethiopian parents are in an ambivalent situation
on one hand they regard the maintenance of L1 (Amharic) as very important for their identity, culture and family, on the other hand maintenance of L1 is secondary once the children begin school. Conclusion As this study indicates, a variety of variables interact in affecting parental attitudes towards child rearing, educational responsibility and more specifically the enhancement of language and literacy. Some of these variables stem from the home culture while others are a result of the parents’ coping with integration into a new society and culture. In particular in the case of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel, parents choose to be involved in the child’s development, socialisation and preliteracy practices only up to the age of formal education. Once formal education begins, Ethiopian parents feel that they no longer can fulfil the role of ‘educators’. They relinquish this role to the formal educational system and withdraw almost completely from their educational backup-support
which the formal educational system in Israel relies on heavily. Most parents in literate Western societies continue to foster and encourage the development of their child’s literacy during the schooling years. They have opportunities to observe their child’s literacy development and often participate in home literacy practices. Reading to children, engaging in conversations about texts, print, word meanings and many others, seem to act as predictors of success in literacy development (Barton 1994; Dickinson and DeTemple 1998). Ethiopian parents want the same future for their children as any other parent in today’s world. However, being immigrants in a new society makes it very hard for them to see how and what they can do to help their children achieve these goals. As long as the children are chakla (infants), wond lij lacking thought (for boys at the toddler age and slightly above) and fit lij playful girl (for girls at the toddler age and slightly above) parents feel that they are the primary caregivers. They feel they have something to contribute and they know when and how the child is supposed to develop physically, socially and mentally. At this age, parents feel they are equipped with the necessary knowledge to provide the children with their basic intellectual, cognitive and existential needs. When it comes to language use and cultural maintenance they ascribe to promoting the first language at home during early childhood. The onset of formal schooling (first grade) is a pivotal point in parental assessment and scholastic support. When the official education (as they perceive it) takes over, they relinquish their role of educational backup even at the expense of fostering the traditional literacy practices relevant to the home culture. In spite of expressing very strong feelings about the importance of maintaining the first language, they actually believe in enhancing the second language. Ethiopian parents would
perhaps
promote and support their child’s literacy development during schooling, in their own ways and according to their cultural background, if schools were to encourage that. Their literacy practices, as those of other immigrant and minority ethnic groups, would differ significantly from other non-Ethiopian families. These practices undoubtedly would play an important role in the child’s literacy development. A patronising and unsympathetic scholastic

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framework that has not valued the cultural and linguistic diversity of these families has contributed indirectly to the fact that parents have become uninvolved and detached. Schools in general fail to recognise the variety of strengths that these children might bring with them from their homes and communities, and do not realise that the immigrant homes may be unable to support the schoolbased literacy practices without some bridging between home and school (Gregory 1996).

Bridging between home and school educational practices In this study we assumed that parents’ description of their child’s literacy development is accurate and may provide educators with valuable insights which may not be readily measured or displayed in standardised or diagnostic tests. The results show that for this particular group of immigrants, who have lived in Israel for over 10 years (some parents are even graduates of the Israeli educational system) there still is a very obvious need to bridge between home and school literacy practices, but most of all to encourage these parents to continue and maintain close contact with their child’s development. As in the case of other such immigrant groups, the Ethiopian parents are concerned with the child’s physical and emotional well being. Ethiopian parents may be intimidated by the formal educational system responsible for providing children with knowledge that their homes often lack. These parents feel unqualified to support their child’s scholastic needs. What is particularly disturbing is the fact that these parents reach the conclusion that they should not continue to employ their native and cultural literary traditions and practices, so as not to interfere with the child’s schooling in the new language. This conclusion is borne out of the academic literacy demands which cannot be met. A covert influx of messages as to the negative effects of maintaining a first language in lieu of fostering the second one contributes to the parents’ ‘stepping aside’ approach. They often end up speaking to their children in Hebrew, which they do not fully command, and thus communication within the family is further impaired. This situation strips the Ethiopian children from the possibility to blend practices (i.e. syncretic literacy coined by Duranti and Ochs 1997) in which they could use the linguistic codes, the texts and their genres through a variety of activities, some of which are their own individual productions, integrating and alternating school and home practices. In fact, these children are deprived of the benefits of the bilingual and bicultural context in which they live and as a result their home support is greatly impoverished. In conclusion, educational policymakers and teachers in immigrant contexts ought to pay special attention and become more aware of the trepidations and ambivalence that immigrant parents face in defining their roles vis-a`-vis the school system. It is necessary to develop special intervention programmes that encourage parents to maintain the role of mentor and educator even when the home literacy traditions are very different from the school-based tradition. Mutual respect and interaction between the literacy traditions could enrich the child and the parent and contribute to a greater achievement at school. Indirectly yet forcefully, this is what we have learned from our candid Ethiopian parents.

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