Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Linguistics)
This research project has two primary focuses. The first focus explores home literacy practices of Turkish immigrant children in South Africa, who are learning the English language in the school context to be able to carry on their education in the country, and how congruent these home literacy practices are with the school literacy practices. To be able to discover this, I studied their experiences with family members in their homes, as well their experiences in the school setting. The second focus is the parental involvement of Turkish immigrant parents’ in the schooling of their children and how their being involved can be facilitated for more effective communication between parents and the school. To explore this area, my project is framed by two broad theories of literacy: literacy as social practice and immigrant literacies. In this study two sets of data were collected: the primary data were interviews conducted with immigrant children, their parents and the teachers, while observations made up the secondary component of my data. The data was analysed by using content analysis. This helped me code the data into six manageable themes, which produced a collection of findings regarding immigrant children’s home literacy practices which are different from the school literacy, their experiences at school in their process of adaptation, and parental involvement in the school activities. The acknowledged themes of this research are clearly interrelated: feelings of Turkish immigrant children before coming to South Africa, their experiences regarding language learning, home literacy practices, the school’s view on immigrant children, segregation between local and immigrant children and parental involvement. The results of this research project were stimulating and displayed that how the literacy practices of immigrant children differ in different contexts such as home and school and in what ways the school can build on them to facilitate adaptation and language learning for them, as well as the new ways to promote immigrant parents’ actively partaking in the school activities.