Parental Involvement in English First Additional Language Learning: Teacher Perspectives

Although parental involvement is fundamental to school functioning in an English First Additional Language (EFAL) setting, the nature and extent of such involvement are debatable and contested among stakeholders. Debatably, not much research has been conducted to find out the teachers' perspectives on parental involvement in their children's learning of EFAL in the Intermediate Phase. Thus, drawing from the teachers' voices, this study aimed to explore the ways in which parents assist their children in the teaching and learning of EFAL in the Intermediate Phase in South Africa. This qualitative study, which involved six teachers in the Intermediate Phase in South Africa, that is, Grades 4-6 EFAL teachers, used telephonic interviews to collect data. The findings revealed that the parents help their children with homework, and where they do not understand, they reach out to the teachers. Besides, those parents can afford to enlist the services of a tutor to provide supplementary EFAL lessons to their children. Also, parental involvement is moulded by the socio-economic environment of the parents, as the participants reported that parents provide material resources, but economic challenges are always a limiting factor. Moreover, some parents bring up their children speaking both a home language and an additional language, English, by promoting multilingualism in their home for their children's linguistic development. The recommendation is that parents should expose their children at home to many languages as this enhances their understanding of EFAL at school.