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ESL Parents and Teachers: TowardsDialogue?Yan Guo a & Bernard Mohan ba Faculty of Education , University of Calgary , Alberta,Canadab Department of Language and Literacy Education , Universityof British Columbia , Vancouver, CanadaPublished online: 29 Jul 2010.

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ESL Parents and Teachers: TowardsDialogue?

Yan GuoFaculty of Education, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Bernard MohanDepartment of Language and Literacy Education, University of BritishColumbia, Vancouver, Canada

Conflict and miscommunication between English as a Second Language (ESL) parentsand teachers has had a major impact on educational policy, but few empirical studiesexamine it as discourse. This study examines communication between ESL parentsand high school ESL teachers in a ‘Parents’ Night’ (PN) event organised to increaseunderstanding of the ESL programme. It examines an intercultural communicationview and a ‘dialogue across differences’ view, using a more comprehensive systemicfunctional linguistics view to describe the discourse of the event and locate it inits contexts. It explores explanations for a conflict that occurred, draws implicationsabout the role of each view and considers prospects for the future development of ESLparent–teacher communication.

doi: 10.2167/le731.0

Keywords: ESL education, ESL parent–teacher intercultural communication,parents’ night, systemic functional linguistics, dialogue across differences, prac-tical reasoning

IntroductionResearch shows that the limited communication between English as a Second

Language (ESL) parents and teachers is a serious problem (Gougeon, 1993;Guo, 2006; Ran, 2001; Salzberg, 1998). Ran (2001) studied the interaction offour Mainland Chinese families with three British teachers in parent–teachermeetings. Ran found that Chinese parents and British teachers failed to connectwith each other due to differences in educational philosophy. Chinese parentswanted more homework and emphasised accuracy and perfect scores, micro-aspects of learning, whereas British teachers viewed error as a normal part of thelearning process and focused on problem-solving, macro-aspects of learning. InBritish Columbia, Canada, the Vancouver and Richmond school boards haveboth been approached with proposals for traditional schools,1 with claims ofsupport from ESL parents (The Globe and Mail, 1 February 1999). In the Richmondschool district, difficulties of communication with Chinese immigrant parentshave become a major political question (Gaskell, 2001).

0950-0782/08/01 017-17 $20.00/0 C© 2008 Y. Guo & B. MohanLANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Vol. 22, No. 1, 2008

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Conflict and miscommunication have influenced educational policy. For ex-ample, the Calderdale decision was formulated in England in the 1980s aftera group of ESL parents successfully sued a school authority because they felttheir children were ghettoised in an ESL programme (Leung & Franson, 2001).Consequently, the Ministry of Education prohibited ESL programmes through-out England, and ESL teachers now work as support teachers within contentclasses. In North America, California Proposition 227, known as the Unz Initia-tive, passed with a 63% approval in 1998 and eliminated all forms of the ESLinstruction and bilingual programmes except immersion (Crawford, 1997), withlarge numbers of Hispanic parents voting against the ESL and bilingual edu-cation. Parents believed that their children were not learning English quicklyenough. Thus, the message is clear: it is important to reach all ESL parents andsupport an open dialogue between educators and parents. Informed parentalvoice is important in achieving quality education for ESL students. We believethat schools and their stakeholders should develop a shared vision that canguide organisational learning in positive directions (Senge, 1994).

This study examines the communication processes where parental attitudesand beliefs are at issue. It will show major differences between immigrant par-ents and schools, and more importantly, that the ESL parent–teacher commu-nication processes are themselves problematic, placing the resolution of thesedifferences in doubt.

What underlies conflict and miscommunication? One possible factor is a con-cern about the educational progress of ESL students. In Canada, in high school,ESL learners are highly likely to fail to graduate. A longitudinal study in aCalgary, Alberta, Canada, high school reported an overall failure rate for ESLstudents of 74%, and for those who entered Grade 9 with minimal English,the failure rate was more than 90% (Watt & Roessingh, 2001). In Vancouver,61% of the ESL high school students disappeared from the academic courses(Gunderson, 2004). By comparison, in the total school population of Canada,about three quarters of students graduate (Statistics Canada, 2005). A widelyaccepted explanation is the time taken by ESL learners to develop the grade-level academic language proficiency (Cummins, 1991) needed for success inschool. Collier (1987: 617) notes that ‘arrivals at ages of 12–15 experienced thegreatest difficulty and were projected to require as much as 6–8 years to reachgrade level norms in academic achievement when schooled in the second lan-guage’ (see also Thomas & Collier, 2002). Therefore, an ESL student who arrivesin Grade 8 with minimal English will find it hard to graduate from Grade 12within five years. Such students face an insoluble conflict: they need to takecontent courses to graduate, but they need ESL courses to gain the language tosucceed in their content courses. To develop this academic language, studentsin many districts have to complete a non-credit ESL programme before they canenter a full range of content courses. But they need ongoing support: when theyleave the programme, their grades decrease and they have more difficulty withtheir content courses (Gunderson, 2004). The students thus need ongoing ESLsupport in a ‘whole school’ approach, a change that is long overdue, given thelarge proportions of these students in urban school systems (47% of secondaryschools in Toronto and 52% of the school population in Vancouver). Yet in theprovince of Ontario, few graduating teachers take an ESL elective. ‘The state of

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ESL Parents and Teachers 19

ESL in large, multi-ethnic school boards is abysmal . . . The reality is that ESLstudents are denied access to supports necessary for their academic success’(People for Education, 2005: 8).

Theoretical FrameworkThis study examines communication between ESL parents and high school

ESL teachers in a ‘Parents’ Night’ (PN) event organised to increase understand-ing of the ESL programme. We will discuss three ‘views’, which we will apply tothe data. First, we will consider the widely known intercultural communicationor intercultural differences view. Then we consider Taylor’s ‘dialogue across dif-ferences’ view which aims to overcome differences. Finally, we discuss the morecomprehensive systemic functional linguistics view which enables us systemat-ically and holistically to describe the discourse of the event, and locate it in itscontexts. In the data analysis, we will examine the three views as explanationsfor a conflict that occurred.

Intercultural communicationLustig and Koester give a general definition of intercultural communication:

‘Intercultural communication occurs when large and important cultural dif-ferences create dissimilar interpretations and expectations about how to com-municate competently’ (Lustig & Koester, 2003: 50). R. Scollon and S. Scollon(2001) give an account based on discourse, broadly conceived: ‘The discoursesof our cultural groups . . . make it more difficult for us to interpret those who aremembers of different groups. We call these enveloping discourses “discoursesystems” . . . The major sources of miscommunication in intercultural contextslie in differences in patterns of discourse’ (R. Scollon & S. Scollon, 2001: xii–xiii).Discourse systems include the following aspects of culture: ideology, socialisa-tion, forms of discourse and face systems.

Li (2006) provides an example of an interview study of ESL parents andteachers that discusses intercultural differences (but not communication). Sheexplored culturally contested pedagogy by examining the views of languageeducation (traditional, teacher centred, code emphasis vs progressive, studentcentred, meaning emphasis) of Chinese middle class parents and mainstreamteachers in a publicly funded elementary school in Richmond, BC, Canada. Sheproposed a ‘pedagogy of cultural reciprocity’ so that teachers and parents mightwork together more successfully. In a critical review, Wamba (2006), drawing onFreirian work, points out that her single focus on Chinese educational culture hasvalue, but is hardly an adequate explanation of all educational disagreementsbetween teachers and Chinese parents. Nor does it address the educational ques-tion: what is best for the learner? Wamba underlines the need to study actualparent–teacher interactions where teachers knowledgeable about second lan-guage and culture learning aim at reconciling differences about the educationof their children.

The core of this approach centres on differences between groups, which resultin differences in interpretation in communication, which in our study, we willcall ‘mismatches’, and examine them particularly through reflection data.

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‘Dialogue across differences’/practical reasoningWhere the intercultural approach concentrates on differences, the ‘dialogue

across differences’ view aims to overcome differences and resolve conflicts tobring us together. This view comes from the philosopher Charles Taylor whoaccepts that the modern age is plural in two respects; there is an irreducibleplurality of values and cultures, and there is also a plurality of forms of reflec-tion, with any form of reflection being conditioned by the author’s culture andother factors. For Taylor, unlike many postmodern writers, it does not followthat one must simply accept the irreducible plurality (Tully, 1994: xiv). Taylorbelieves what he calls ‘practical reason’ offers the possibility of a rational ar-bitration of differences between conflicting views in culture, ethics and otherareas by reasoned argument aiming at validity. Since it deals with differenceand dialogue (Taylor, 1994, 1997), this arbitration could be called a ‘dialogueacross differences’. Going beyond the aim of a more perspicacious apprecia-tion of differences between interlocutors, the goal of practical reason is to reachagreement between disputing positions. As such, practical reason provides analternative to lapsing into subjectivism and relativism. Practical reason ‘startsfrom something that is common to the two (or more) positions in the dispute. . . it is directed at the participants in the conversation and at the things theyposit or value’. Practical reason ‘strives, through the comparison, questioningand rearticulation of views, either towards some reconciliation of differences orto persuading the interlocutors that they should come to agree that one positionis better’ (Abbey, 2000: 166).

We undertook an exploratory analysis, which looked for what were, in ourview, some relevant features of ‘practical reasoning’ that might apply to thepresentations at the PN. We looked for discourse evidence of: (1) awareness ofcommonalities and differences between the views of parents and teachers; (2)awareness of values in those views, both positive values (e.g. aims and goals)and negative values (which we call ‘concerns’); and (3) reasoned argumentswhich aim at reconciling differences.

Systemic functional linguistics: Text in contextWe need to connect the dialogue across differences approach to discourse

analysis, and apply it along with the intercultural communication approach toparent–teacher communication data. It would be desirable not to limit ourselvesto these two approaches but to use a holistic description of discourse which couldreveal other issues. Since PN is a school event, it would be wise not to ignorethe educational context of this discourse. Finally, it would be advantageous ifour discourse analysis was systematically related to linguistic analysis so thatrelevant issues could be brought into sharp focus.

To meet these requirements, we will use the more comprehensive systemicfunctional linguistics (SFL) perspective of ‘text in context’ which enables ussystematically and holistically to describe the discourse of the event and locate itin its contexts. SFL studies text in context, following ‘the principle that languageis understood in relation to its environment’ (Halliday, 1999: 1). One type ofcontext is the ‘context of situation’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1985: 52 ff), the immediateenvironment of the text. Its three components are: the field of discourse, typically

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subdivided into the social activity and its social goals vs. the topic of discourse(e.g. the social activity or speech event of PN vs. the topics it deals with), thetenor of discourse (e.g. the social roles and relations between teachers, parentsand students) and the mode of discourse (e.g. the medium and role of language,such as presentations to the whole audience, smaller group discussions). Ouranalysis of discourse will illustrate all three but will particularly focus on field.The second type of context is the ‘context of culture’, the broader backgroundagainst which the text has to be interpreted. Halliday illustrates how the field,mode and tenor of any text in school ‘are instances of, and derive their meaningfrom, the school as an institution in the culture’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1985: 46). Ouranalysis of the context of culture of PN is selective and our discourse analysis(e.g. of practical reasoning) is informal, but indicates how a more thoroughanalysis might develop. Detailed linguistic analysis is beyond the scope of thispaper.

The SFL description of our data provides unique insights into the ESL parent–teacher communication. We will examine all three views as possible explanationsfor a conflict that occurred at PN.

In the context of the ESL education in Canada, our study investigated thecommunication processes between ESL teachers and parents through ESL PN.Two initial research questions guided our study.

(1) How do teachers approach Parents’ Night? Why?(2) How do parents react to Parents’ Night? Why?

Methodology

Research siteA purposeful sampling procedure was adopted for the study (McMillan &

Schumacher, 2001). This study was conducted at Milton Secondary School (apseudonym) located on the west side of Vancouver, BC. Milton was chosen forthree reasons: school diversity, programming and parent–teacher communica-tion. First, it had a specifically designed ESL programme for immigrant students.A relatively large secondary school with about 1700 students from Grade 8 to 12,it is situated in a quiet, middle to upper middle class neighbourhood. Sixty-twopercent of the students spoke a language other than English at home. Ap-proximately 200, 160 and 120 students in 1997, 1998 and 1999, respectively, werestudying in the ESL programme. Many of these students were recent immigrantsfrom Taiwan or Hong Kong, with a smaller number from Mainland China.

Second, the ESL programme consisted of a number of non-credit content-based courses such as ESL science and ESL social studies, which integratedthe instruction of the English language and subject matter simultaneously, ex-cept physical education and maths, which were mainstream classes. Most ESLclasses were randomly assigned heterogeneous classes, referred to as multi-levelgrouping. As a result, any ESL class would have students of different ages andof varying levels of English language proficiency. This system was unique in thecity where most secondary schools used a lock-step system, in which ESL stu-dents moved through various levels to reach mainstream classes. The studentsat Milton generally stayed in the ESL programme for two years.

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Third, the programme included organised ESL PN for more than ten years.These nights allowed teachers to inform parents about the philosophy of theESL programme and convince parents their ESL programme was the best forstudents. At PN, ESL and mainstream teachers jointly explained to parents howESL classes taught prerequisite skills for the academic tasks which studentsface in mainstream classes. Former and current ESL students also explained thedifferences between ESL and mainstream classes and the difficulties they facedin mainstream classes.

ParticipantsNine ESL teachers and six bilingual assistants participated in the study. Three

teachers were pursuing a master’s degree in Teaching English as a SecondLanguage (TESL) while one was pursuing a doctoral degree in education. Oneteacher had taught English in Japan and Taiwan and another had taught ESLin the United States. All the teachers participated in the planning, delivery andfeedback sessions of the event. In addition, they involved their students in theentire process.

The bilingual assistants were trained graduate research assistants who werealso experienced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or ESL teachers. Beforethe PN, teachers sent home invitations to parents with a tear-off sheet they couldreturn. The assistants followed up the invitations with the parents/guardiansin Mandarin, Cantonese or English. Unlike earlier immigrants in the study ofGhuman and Wong (1989), many Chinese parents in the present study wereentrepreneurs, investors or independent immigrant status from Taiwan, HongKong and mainland China.2 This group consisted primarily of middle to uppermiddle class, post-secondary educated, achievement-oriented business peopleor professionals. For many parents, the major reason they immigrated to Canadawas their children’s education. The lengths of these parents’ stay in Canadaranged from a few months to four years. The bilingual assistants served asinterpreters at PN.

The lead author was introduced to the teachers and parents as a researcherfrom a Canadian university who studied the processes of home–school com-munication. I played a role of a participant observer seeking to ‘maintain abalance between being an insider and an outsider, between participation andobservation’ (Spradley, 1980: 60). I participated in some activities in responseto teachers’ requests. I explained PN to parents by telephone and presented in-formation gathered from parents at the teachers’ planning meetings before PN.I also interpreted for Chinese parents at PN and reported parents’ feedback tothe teachers after PN.

Data collectionThree research methods – interviews, naturalistic observations and focus

groups – were used for data collection over a three-year period. Twelve ESLdepartment planning meetings for PN were observed, each of which lastedabout fifty minutes. At these meetings, teachers discussed parents’ feedbackbased on a survey3 from the previous year. Building on the feedback, teachersdiscussed their purposes, educational philosophies and involvement of students

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for the next PN. Observations of the planning meetings helped to examine howthe teachers responded to parents’ feedback.

Three annual ESL PNs were observed. Observations focused on interactionsbetween ESL teachers and parents, how the meetings were arranged, how teach-ers and students made their presentations, what topics were covered, howparents asked their questions and how teachers responded. The 12 planningmeetings and three PNs were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed.

After PNs, nine ESL teachers were interviewed individually, from 30 to 80minutes; three were interviewed twice because of their active involvement inPN. These interviews allowed teachers to reflect on and recall their experiencesof the event and articulate their beliefs about the ESL learning.

Six bilingual assistants were also interviewed individually, from 30 to 50minutes. Before PN, the bilingual assistants telephoned 257 parents/guardiansto explain the purpose of the event in the parents’ first languages. They alsoasked parents what questions they would like to ask the teachers. The leadauthor did follow-up calls with 105 parents/guardians, with the referral of theassistants, to clarify the nature of parents’ concerns. At PN, parents asked afew questions through the assistants. The assistants also talked to the parentsinformally to get their feedback at the end of the event. After PN the bilingualassistants asked parents’ feedback on the event, particularly about their reactionsto the teachers’ and students’ presentations and whether their concerns wereaddressed. Parents’ feedback was recorded in the bilingual assistants’ and leadsauthor’s field notes.4 The formal interviews with the assistants focused on theparents’ interpretations of the ESL programme, the parents’ major concerns, andtheir strategies for working with these concerns.

A focus group with eight ESL teachers and four bilingual assistants wasalso conducted after the individual interviews were completed. The summarydata of the interviews were duly reported and the group also reviewed dataabout the parents’ feedback conveyed by the six bilingual assistants. The focusgroup generated more information about teachers’ and parents’ perspectivesof the ESL learning and parents’ concerns, valuable data used for purposes oftriangulation.

Data analysisThe process of qualitative data collection and analysis is recursive and

dynamic, as suggested by McMillan and Schumacher (2001). Data analysis inthis study was ongoing throughout the data collection period. The ongoinganalysis helped to identify emerging patterns and themes (e.g. parents’reaction to PN). The inductive analysis strategy was applied to the interviewdata in order to understand how participants approached PN (McMillan& Schumacher, 2001). Observation data of the teachers’ planning meetingswere also analysed inductively to identify teachers’ goals for PN. This wasaccomplished by searching for categories, patterns or domains that emergedfrom the data rather than being imposed on data prior to data collection(McMillan & Schumacher, 2001; Spradley, 1980). More systematic analysis wasconducted after the data collection was completed and the interviews weretranscribed. Note that we used the SFL concept of field to understand our own

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qualitative analysis procedures: we observed the event of PN (speech event:field 1) and we interviewed participants about the topic of PN (topic: field 2).Taking this viewpoint, the relation between observations and interviews can bescrutinised using the linguistic analysis of field.

Findings and DiscussionPN was a complex event, and its first part typically began in the school

auditorium, where the school principal welcomed ESL parents and students.Next, a school area superintendent outlined provincial and school district ESLpolicy. Then others reviewed services such as ESL counselling and multiculturalliaison. In the second part of the evening, teachers and others spoke about theESL programme. In the third part, teachers, parents and students moved toseven individual homerooms, where the ESL teacher explained the programmeand answered questions from students, and where students showed portfoliosof their work to their parents.

Context of culture: DescriptionA central aspect of the context of culture of PN was an underlying concern of

teachers and parents about the educational progress of ESL students. Above, wehave reviewed research studies that show that in Canada, in high school, ESLlearners are highly likely to fail to graduate, that ESL learners need to developgrade-level academic language proficiency, that an ESL student who arrives inGrade 8 with minimal English will find it hard to graduate from Grade 12 andthat such students face an insoluble conflict between taking content courses andtaking ESL courses. Students in the study school district had to complete a non-credit ESL programme before they could enter a full range of content courses.Adequate ongoing support is not available when they leave the ESL programme.This information is essential background for understanding the texts of PNwhen reference is made to such key lexical phrases as: the ESL programme,student language learning, conversational and academic language proficiency,the length of time taken to exit from ESL programme to mainstream, studentlearning in the mainstream, and graduation. ESL teachers and parents share acommon interest in the educational progress of ESL students, but experienceit differently through their different roles. They may, therefore, concentrate ondifferent aspects of the intractable problem of ESL student progress in highschool systems. The ESL teachers may aim for the best use of student time inthe ESL programme, while parents may worry about their child’s progress tograduation.

Context of situation

Field 1 (Social activity/speech event): Speech event of PN in Canada. Maingoal: Inform all parents about ESL education (as opposed to arbitrate seri-ous differences with individuals).Field 2 (Topic): Institutional: The ESL programme, and the Canadian edu-cation system generally.Tenor: Formal: School officials and teachers speaking to ESL parents andstudents.

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ESL Parents and Teachers 25

Mode: Pre-planned spoken monologue with a large audience in the audi-torium; pre-planned presentations and dialogue with a smaller audiencein the homerooms.

Teachers’ approach to parents’ nightThis section considers teachers’ goals for the PN and then examines how they

realised these goals in the speech event, noting evidence of Taylor’s ‘practicalreasoning’. Accordingly, we will look for discourse evidence of reflection on bothparents’ and teachers’ views and values, and of reasoned arguments aimed atreconciliation of differences.

Teachers identified three goals for PN: to inform parents and students aboutthe ESL programme and the Canadian education system; to promote under-standing for parents of students’ language acquisition and learning and theprogression from ESL to mainstream; and to demonstrate student strengths inreading, writing, listening and speaking through presentations/activity.

Here we illustrate goal one, discussing other goals as needed.

Our students are primarily Chinese from either Hong Kong or Taiwan,where the predominant mode of instruction is rote learning. Students aremotivated by demanding and strict teachers who give tests regularly andexpect students to memorise what is said in the classroom. Our morelenient approach, based on developing thinking skills and creativity is al-ready a huge shift for parents to grasp. When we throw in non-gradedESL classes where Grade 8’s are mixed with Grade 12’s and where begin-ners are grouped with advanced English speakers, parents are sometimesbewildered . . . As professional educators, teachers in the ESL departmentrecognise the need to educate our parents, as well as our students, to thegoals and philosophy behind our system . . . As they (parents) continually‘push’ their children to ‘work hard’ and get out of ESL, we feel it essentialto organise a Parents’ Night every year to introduce our parents to thesenew ideas. (T5, interview)

Here, the teacher compares educational approaches in Hong Kong/Taiwan andCanada, reflecting on a contrast between views and values of ESL parents andof teachers (e.g. rote learning vs. thinking skills) and a sense of parents’ concernsabout leniency and multi-level classes. Seeing an urgent professional responsi-bility to inform all parents about how Canadian programmes were different, theteacher describes PN mainly as a mass educational information event, whichlimits the scope for Taylor’s ‘practical reasoning’ through arbitration dialoguesbetween individuals.

Parents were vitally concerned with exit from the programme and the lengthof time students stay in the programme. The following examples from the PNshow speakers addressing this concern and giving reasoned arguments to justifythe philosophy of the programme and reconcile parents to it but not to arbitratedifferences. Sometimes the justification draws strength from a parallelism be-tween what the speakers say and what they do, or who the speakers are. All ofthese speeches were simultaneously translated into Cantonese and Mandarin.

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An ESL specialist from the local School Board drew her knowledge of otherschools to endorse the programme and student time spent in it:

You are very fortunate that your children are at this school. The ESL pro-gramme is one of the finest in the city. I’d also let you know it takes along time for students to learn English. I work with all elementary andsecondary schools in this area, and the average time students spend in theESL programme or with the ESL support in this area of the city is two tothree years. So learning a language is not an easy task for students.

A teacher from the ESL programme justified the average stay in the pro-gramme on the basis of research, drawing on Cummins (1991) to explain toparents the difference between conversational proficiency and academic lan-guage proficiency, which was a main aim of the programme:

It is more difficult to understand the textbook than just to talk to yourfriends on the phone about what you want to do on Saturday night.Conversation skills take about one to two years to master while aca-demic language proficiency takes five to seven years. So really two yearsin ESL is a minimum. Academic language proficiency refers to thingslike thinking processes, reading for information from textbooks, writ-ing an essay, making a presentation whereas in conversation you getcontext.

An ESL science teacher and a mainstream science teacher jointly describedhow they cooperatively taught the academic science discourse required forthe mainstream. Thus, they ‘practiced what they preached’; their cooperativepresentation onstage paralleled their topic of cooperation in teaching scienceregister:

The Mainstream science teacher:

Even though some may think that science involves less English, actuallythere are many new vocabulary terms and students must be able to readand understand textbooks and the teacher’s notes. Also assignments mustbe written using an acceptable level of English.

The ESL science teacher:

What we would like to do now is show you how ESL science preparesthe students for mainstream classes. In ESL science I teach students howto write definitions and note-taking skills step by step. In mainstreamscience it is expected that students already know how. In ESL science Iteach students how to write lab reports step by step, and in mainstreamclasses it is taught in Grade 8, but by the time students are getting intoother grades it is assumed that they know. Unless students come in atGrade 8 level, they learn it in ESL science, or they don’t learn it.

Current ESL students presented their comparison of education in Canadaand Taiwan, highlighting differences in student-centred instruction, differentkinds of homework, cooperative learning and learning language in context.

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They also ‘practiced what they preached’; their responsible participation in astudent group presentation paralleled their description of Canadian education.

S1: The teachers here like students to be responsible, like students to askquestions, and also let students participate.

S2: The homework is also different. In Taiwan, all homework is copying ev-erything from the textbook, but here teachers give students homeworkby presentation, or read newspaper, or to prepare for a presentation.You have to go to the library and do all the work by yourself.

S3: The teachers here have students do group work. They often dividestudents into different groups and discuss a topic. In my home country,Taiwan, we all sit in our own seats, and listen to the teacher.

S4: We also have TV and video in our classroom, sometimes we watchmovies to learn things.

The next two speakers also relied on a parallel between what they preachedand what they practiced or knew from experience. The Chinese parent of aformer ESL student attributed her success in the mainstream to necessary skillslearned by staying in the programme:

I would like to give this message to ESL parents and students. Be patient.Don’t rush to get into mainstream. My daughter would not be on theHonour Roll without the foundation she got in ESL. The skills she learnedin ESL were necessary for her success.

A Grade 12 former ESL student from Taiwan described his problems withexiting the ESL programme too soon, and his difficulties with academic listening,reading, writing and speaking:

When I first came to Canada three years ago, I took all the ESL courses andthe next year I jumped from ESL socials to the regular social studies. That’sreally tough for me. These are the problems I encountered in the regularclasses: 1) I don’t understand what the teacher said; 2) I don’t understandthe textbook; 3) I don’t know how to write an essay; and 4) I don’t speakat all. I just sit and listen quietly.

With respect to Taylor’s model, there is therefore discourse evidence thatthe teachers and their supporters worked to reconcile differences with parentsby recognising common goals (success in the mainstream), identifying differ-ences (different approaches to education and to language learning), and offeringreasons based on needs of the students, research about academic discourse, evi-dence of ‘science register cooperation’ between the ESL teacher and mainstreamscience teacher and experience of participants in the ESL programme. The SFLprovides tools to examine this discourse evidence in much sharper detail, aswe have indicated by noting the parallel between what speakers ‘practice’ andwhat they ‘preach’, which is a parallel between speech event (field 1) and topic(field 2). A similar parallel is looked for when, as qualitative researchers, wecompare the transcript of the PN with the teacher’s description of the goals forthe PN, or with parents’ reactions to the PN.

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28 Language and Education

Parents’ reactions to parents’ nightThe parents showed a range of reactions to PN.

New parents

The most positive reactions were from ‘new’ parents. These parents were rela-tively new to Canada. Their children were relatively new to the ESL programme.They usually did not know much about the Canadian educational system andwere anxious about their children’s progress in school. This group of parentsseemed to be happy with the general information about school policies and theESL programme provided at PN. This is evident from the fact that many of theseparents expressed their appreciation. They asserted that the energy and effortput into it was very worthwhile. For example, parents commented:

• The Parents’ Night was very helpful to me because I learned so much aboutthe ESL programme.

• Now I know how many courses that my son takes in the ESL programme.

It appeared that these parents accepted the teachers’ goals for PN as an edu-cational speech event. The ‘new’ parents were a difficult group for the teachersto communicate with, for obvious reasons. PN was successful for them, and thissuccess underlines the importance of making parents aware of the underlyingassumptions of the ESL Programme.

Even so, there were some communication difficulties that appeared to be dueto intercultural mismatches. For example, ‘new’ parents were unfamiliar withPN as a school event. As one of the parents stated:

In Taiwan we were used to learning about our own children by means ofmarks on report cards. When we were invited to go to the Parents’ Nightwe did not know why we need to go.

When invited, many parents were initially unwilling to come to the PN, notunderstanding what the evening was about. Since the parents knew little aboutthe ESL programme, it was difficult for them to recognise that the educationalassumptions of the ESL programme were different from those in Taiwan. Henceit was difficult for them to recognise the need to understand these differences.The PN seemed to be a new concept for them. They came to the PN to learnabout their own children, not to learn general information about the programme.Simply put, their initial question was ‘Can you give me information about mychild?’

‘Experienced’ parents

The ‘experienced’ parents were people whose children had typically been inthe programme for at least one year or more, and who were therefore fairlyfamiliar with the ESL programme, more familiar with the PN as a school eventand more aware of the teachers’ view of its purposes. They knew more aboutthe Canadian educational system and had a high level of anxiety about theirchildren’s progress in school. Parents were concerned that ESL classes took timeaway from mainstream classes, and viewed two years in the ESL programmeas too long for their children. Some considered the ESL programme as uselessbecause students did not gain academic credits for it, a clear case of undervaluing

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ESL programmes because school systems undervalued them. Consequently, amain question was: when will my child exit the ESL programme?

Many of the ‘experienced’ parents were therefore strongly dissatisfied withthe topics covered at PN. Some of these parents said that PN was ‘a waste oftime’, and they would not come again.

For example, parents said:

• I would not come to Parents’ Night because I have been to Parents’ Nightbefore, but my concerns were not addressed. It was useless to come becausewhat I really wanted from the teachers was to ask them to give ESL studentsan exit test so that I would know when my children were ready to move tothe mainstream classes.

• I would like to meet the teacher individually to discuss how well my child isdoing in ESL. I don’t feel I should go to Parents’ Night unless I can talk to theteacher.

In sum, new parents were interested in the topics of the PN, learning aboutthe ESL programme so that they could support their children’s progress throughschool. Initially, though, they had a problem with the PN as an unfamiliar speechevent. In striking contrast, many experienced parents, familiar with the PN asa speech event, rejected its topics, wanting discussion of different topics (‘myconcerns’, ‘how well my child is doing’). Thus, the distinction between speechevent (field 1) and topic (field 2) is vital for understanding the difference betweenparents’ reactions.

We have seen above how teachers tried to address this concern about time inthe ESL programme in a variety of ways. Why were parents and teachers seeingthings differently?

In small group discussions with the bilingual assistants, parents expressedstrong concerns about their children not being able to graduate. They worriedthat the ESL programme would slow down their children’s progress to gradua-tion and university:

• What happens if my kid has two courses left before he graduates? He has toleave high school at 19. What happens then if you cannot graduate with thesystem?

• Did you go to school here? How long did you stay in ESL? What do you thinkof the ESL programme? Do you think the ESL programme slowed you downin the process of going to university?

Similar concerns were shown in parents’ responses to the PN questionnaire.Many of the parents wanted their children to go to university but considered thatthey would not graduate at the correct age if the ESL programme slowed downtheir progress. Consequently, they wanted their children to exit the programmequickly for the mainstream.

How can we explain this conflict between the ESL teachers and many of theexperienced ESL parents? With respect to intercultural differences, we do notbelieve that this conflict is fundamentally intercultural, though interculturaldifferences certainly aggravate it. It is true that there were a number of culturalmismatches between parents and teachers, and that mismatches always con-tribute to a ‘fog of interpretation’. For example, the new parents were unfamiliar

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with the speech event or social activity of the PN. But the concerns of the expe-rienced ESL parents with the ESL programme cannot be adequately explainedas a matter of cultural mismatch. The urgent concern of the experienced parentswas the length of time their children were in the ESL programme, not its educa-tional philosophy. There was no evidence that this concern would be resolvedby altering the ESL programme towards a better cultural match e.g. towardstraditional Chinese language education practices.

With respect to diversity dialogues and practical reasoning, can one explainthe situation with the experienced parents as a failure by the ESL teachersto create a dialogue across differences, despite all of their very real efforts?Would more effort have resulted in a consensual dialogue? While dialogue isvery important, it does not seem to be an adequate explanation of the situation,because it was not the newer parents who were at odds but the more experiencedparents, who had more understanding of the ESL teachers’ arguments. In fact,it was our strong impression that many of the experienced parents were nolonger open to a dialogue about the ESL programme. They were concernedabout progress in the mainstream. Turning to the wider ‘context of culture’surrounding PN, a more adequate explanation appears to be the underlyingproblem of the ESL student progress, which cannot be solved by parent–teachercommunication and negotiation. We have noted how these parents have highaspirations for their children, that large numbers of their children will fail tograduate, and that these learners face an almost insoluble dilemma of balancinglanguage development with subject-matter development in the mainstream.Any parent in this situation would try to make sure their child had the very bestconditions for success as they saw them and would be anxious for exit. Thisis not a concern special to a particular cultural group. While the ESL teacherswere focused on necessary language development via the ESL programme,these experienced parents were focused on the very different issue of progressin the mainstream, with a view to graduation within the normal time limit. Thetragedy of an inequitable education system for high school ESL students withminimal English is that it places these two goals at odds with each other, and ittherefore places ESL teachers and parents at odds with each other. Worse still,negative feedback by parents about the ESL programme can be, and has been,misused by educational policymakers to reduce rather than increase educationalsupport for these ESL students.

To address these frustrations, and create an ongoing dialogue between par-ents and teachers, the school established an ESL parent committee. Note thatthis strategy exchanges the mainly monological, formal and institutional PN for im-proved conditions for parent-teacher negotiation in a different context of situation: asmall-group, immediate-response situation of dialogical conversation (MODE),a more informal situation with more equal power and more frequent contact(TENOR), where more potentially divisive topics can emerge through a moreaccommodating speech-event (FIELD).

Conclusion and ImplicationsWhat are some of the implications of this study for theory and research?

The intercultural model was very helpful in identifying cultural differences,

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ESL Parents and Teachers 31

which were sources of misunderstanding, as it was designed to do. However,not all conflict can be attributed to cultural differences. And the model wasnot designed to resolve conflicts. Taylor’s dialogue/practical reasoning modelis therefore an essential addition to any study of intercultural groups, which isinterested in studying the possibilities of consensus across differences. It washelpful in recognising teacher strategies at the PN that were aimed towardsconsensus with parents, while noting that the conditions for full dialogue wereneither aimed at nor present at the mass meeting of PN. Compared to the in-tercultural model, Taylor’s model picked out very different aspects of the data,data that would otherwise have been ignored, and applied different criteria tothem. To relate these two models systematically and holistically to discoursedata, this study found it crucial to use an SFL perspective, which guided usto look at the context of culture, context of situation and field of PN as speechevent and topic. These aspects are entry points for detailed linguistic analysisof relevant issues. They are possible factors of misunderstanding in any situa-tion of intercultural communication, and possible factors of importance in anydialogue across differences. Context of culture helped account for the conflictbetween the experienced parents and teachers, difference of context of situationfor the dialogical strategy of mitigating conflict with an ESL parent committee,and field as speech event and topic for justification strategies for the PN pre-sentations, differences in reactions between new and experienced parents andmore generally the link between interview data and observations of the PN.Thus, there are great advantages if future studies use an SFL discourse analysisand perspective to analyse a range of models within a series of contexts.

What are some of the practical implications? What can be done to mitigatethe conflict between teachers and experienced parents? The PN is a highly ap-propriate forum to discuss the aims of an ESL programme with new parentsbut not to negotiate conflict with experienced parents who want their childto exit the programme. In their case, PN as an ESL parent–teacher communi-cation process was problematic and was not able to resolve their differences,placing the resolution of this conflict in doubt. Some experienced parents saidthat they wanted an individual parent–teacher conference about their child’sprogress. These were regularly available at the school during the school year.If the parent was not satisfied with the result of these, the parent could appealto the school administration to exit their child. But this is to treat a symptomrather than address its underlying causes. We have noted that the school hadcreated a school-level ESL parent committee. This can play a role in mediat-ing between parents and ESL teachers, communicating information, examiningconflicts, developing ways that parents and teachers can cooperate more, andexploring possible educationally responsible changes in the ESL programmethat are within the ESL teachers’ control. Finally, the committee can open a dia-logue about progress in the mainstream. In the relatively affluent school in thisstudy, ESL students often had a large number of private tutors, who tutoredthem for several mainstream courses, and the ESL teachers at the school hadheld meetings with groups of private tutors to seek ways of coordinating theirjoint efforts. Where circumstances permit, then, this committee can also form alink between parents, teachers and private tutors to support students’ progressin the mainstream towards graduation.

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However, none of the above forms of ESL parent–teacher communicationcan solve the problem that underlies the conflict over exit: that the high schoolESL graduation rate is unacceptably low and that the educational system failsto support ESL students adequately. This will require changes in high schoolpolicy and operation (such as a whole school support policy, bilingual educationwhere possible and credit for ESL courses) and changes in teacher education. Inurban school districts where the percentage of ESL students is more than 40 or50%, such changes are long overdue.

These changes are beyond the power of ESL parents and ESL teachers at theschool level, and it is unlikely that such changes in school policy and teachereducation will come about without strong lobbying by ESL parents and ESLteachers in combination. ESL parents and teachers share a common concernthat ESL students graduate from high school at a rate that reflects their abilitiesand achievements. It would be appropriate for a partnership of the ESL parentorganisations and the ESL teacher organisations at the school district level, andabove, to focus on this common concern and to work for changes in the educationsystem, which will bring it nearer to reality.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Yan Guo, Faculty of Education,

University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4,Canada (yanguo@ucalgary.ca).

Notes1. Most of the parents involved are recent Chinese immigrants who are unhappy with

the work their children are doing in Vancouver and Richmond public schools. Theseparents asked for ‘teacher-led instruction, a homework policy, dress code or uniform,regular study and conduct reports, frequent meetings between parents and teachers,and additional extra-curricular activities’ (Sullivan, 1998: 15A).

2. This is not to say that the Chinese are a homogeneous cultural group. In fact, there aresignificant differences in the political, economic, social and educational systems be-tween China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, thus caution in generalisations about Chineseparents is needed.

3. The survey questions included ‘What language would you like the presentation tobe in?’ ‘What could we do to help you understand our programme?’ ‘In what wayscan we assist your child more?’ ‘What should we do differently?’

4. The parents did not give consent to the audio recording, but allowed me and thebilingual assistants to take notes while we telephoned them. I attempted to conductformal face-to-face interviews with the parents but they did not wish to be inter-viewed, which was not unexpected. As part of a research team studying ESL students,teachers and parents, I had realised that direct access to parents was difficult.

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