Students’ Perspectives on Their Parents’ Involvement in Their L2 English Learning

Abstract

Parental involvement is the collaboration parents make in order to understand children in a correct way as well as to intervene in the educational field by acting as decision-makers, supporters, and assistants (Lee, 2015). It was found that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement and students’ academic achievement (Morris et al., 2013; Baird, 2015; Farah, 2015; Erdener & Knoeppel, 2018). In the language education context, parental involvement is also seen as one of the most significant factors that enhance children’s English competence as well as their motivation to learn English (Morris et al., 2013; Baird, 2015). The present case study investigated students’ perspectives toward their parents’ involvement, their attitudes toward their parents’ involvement, and the kinds of involvement the students wished their parents had done in relation to their L2 English learning. The research participants were determined purposefully by considering the fact that the participants’ parents seemed to care much about their English learning. This was because their parents had enrolled them in additional English classes in the English course as a form of parental involvement and some students also stated that their parents would motivate them to attend the English classes when they did not feel like going and monitor their English scores. Other than that, by the time I conducted this study, I had been their teacher in the English course for two years and I had established a good rapport with them. The interview results were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The results of the data analysis revealed that students perceived parental involvement as important and they needed parental involvement in their English learning to help them improve their English proficiency. The students’ attitudes were also found to be mostly positive with four students (Genta, Dinda, Riani, & Zafran) expressing satisfaction toward their parents’ involvement and only one student (Ian) expressing dissatisfaction toward his parents’ involvement. Furthermore, most of the students stated that there were some kinds of parental involvement that they wished their parents had done to help them achieve their goals in their English learning. From this study, it was found that two students (Genta & Dhea) wished their parents would send them to an English camp and two others (Ian & Riani) wished that their parents would study English with them. There was only one student (Zafran) who stated that his parents’ involvement was enough, and he didn’t expect to see other types of parental involvement in his English learning. It is suggested that the findings of this research become an input for parents to provide help and support for their children in their English learning. Moreover, since this research did not focus on a particular type of parental involvement, future researchers may conduct some research about students’ perspectives on a specific type of parental involvement.