Chinese-Canadian Parents Supporting Dual Online-Offline Learning and Early Biliteracy During COVID-19 School Closures

Guofang Li, Zhen Lin

OAI: oai:igi-global.com:311402 • DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-4569-3.ch010

This chapter investigates how Chinese immigrant families wrestled with a dual-transition from in-person instruction to a virtual environment in both mainstream and heritage language education and how they supported home bi/multi-literacies in English and Chinese heritage language including Mandarin, Cantonese, or other Chinese dialects during the transition. Thematic analyses of 178 parent interviews show that Chinese-immigrant parents have experienced significant changes in their roles and ways in nurturing home early biliteracy development to respond to the schooling transitions from offline to online. Results revealed that the sudden implementation of virtual learning during the COVID-19 school closure has been problematic and challenging for most Chinese-immigrant parents and children.

Literacy and Language Studies Education K-12 Education Social Sciences and Humanities Computer Science and Information Technology