An ethnographic study of literacy behaviors in Chinese families in an urban school community.

Abstract

There has been little research on the nature of literacy behaviors within Chinese families. Chinese students, both Chinese American and non-English speaking Chinese students, have been overlooked as a minority population within American schools. This study had three purposes: (1) to discover, identify and provide detailed descriptions of literacy behaviors in Chinese immigrant families enrolled in an inner city school, (2) to describe patterns and themes around the literacy events within these families and to compare such descriptions among the Chinese families, and (3) to develop grounded hypotheses about the relationship of literacy learning, culture, schooling and social environment on the families. The study uses an ethnographic approach combining case study and type case analysis to describe reading, writing and speaking activities in four Chinese families who had recently arrived in a Midwestern urban center. It presents grounded descriptions of literacy events as they occurred in home, workplace and in other locales. Parents, children and community defined what literacy meant within day-to-day social interactions. The families used historical and cultural knowledge as an interpretive framework for understanding and acting on what they thought necessary for their children's schooling. Although the families designed different literacy activities, patterns and themes emerged across families and around traditional themes of family, stability and change. The families fit schooling into their everyday activities through a personal relationship with social events, institutions, and the environment around them. They made connections between their own lives and broader structures of social and economic restraints. Grounded hypotheses from the research indicate that within these Chinese families: (1) literacy learning is displayed in socially interactive contexts; (2) participants determine the meaning of literacy as it occurs; (3) the literacy event is constructed with cultural knowledge.