Literacy planning: family language policy in Chinese kindergartener families

ABSTRACT

This paper reports a study that used a quantitative method to explore literacy planning in Chinese kindergartener families as well as the influences of socioeconomic status (SES) on it. The conceptual framework of family language policy (FLP), which consists of three components–language ideology, language management, and language practice, was adopted to examine literacy planning. The SES factors investigated included mother’s education, mother’s occupation, father’s education, father’s occupation, and household income. Data were collected via a questionnaire survey of 664 kindergartener families from 10 kindergartens in a Chinese city. Descriptive statistics revealed reasonable language ideology and practice but relatively weak language management in Chinese kindergartener families. Structural equation modelling corroborated the relationships between language ideology, language management, and language practice hypothesised in the FLP theory. It also indicated that only mother’s education significantly predicted the literacy planning of a family. Implications for early intervention for children’s language development were discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Literacy planning
• family language policy
• socioeconomic status
• structural equation modelling

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China [Funding Number 17BYY081]. The authors would like to thank the teachers in the 10 kindergartens for assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, the standardized path coefficient of the path from mother education to language ideology is 0.17. That means, when other relevant variables (i.e. father’s education, father’s occupation, mother’s occupation, and household income) are controlled, an increase or decrease of mother’s education level by 1 will lead to the increase or decrease of language ideology ratings by 0.17.

2 It might be argued that the reason why the structural model did not support the influences of father-related factors on FLP was that the data we used were mostly from mothers. However, running the same model using the data collected from only fathers did not support the influences of father-related factors, either. Thus, the disconnection between father-related SES factors and FLP is not a result of the imbalanced gender distribution of the respondents. Rather, it is likely caused by the general disengagement of fathers in children’s daycare which in turn results from the Chinese tradition of men managing the external affairs while women the internal ones.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 17BYY081].

Notes on contributors

Jing Yin

Jing Yin is associate professor in School of Language and Communication Studies at Beijing Jiaotong University. She holds a PhD degree from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her research interests include language policy, language acquisition and education.

Yan Ding

Yan Ding is associate professor in School of Language and Communication Studies at Beijing Jiaotong University. She holds a PhD degree from the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include applied linguistics and cognitive linguistics.

Maolei Song

Maolei Song is associate professor at Linyi University. She holds a master degree at Shanghai Normal University. Her main research interest is education of preschool children.