ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Language, Culture and Diversity
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1598693
This article is part of the Research TopicIssues, Transformations, and Strategies in World Language Teaching and Learning: Administration, Pedagogy, Technology, and Learning OutcomesView all 7 articles
"Do Our children speak like we speak?" : A Qualitative Study on Chinese American Parents' Perspectives and Practices Regarding Early Literacy Development and Home Literacy Environment in Infants and Toddlers
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hubei Normal University, Huangshi, China
- 2Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- 3University of Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States
- 4King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
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This study employed a qualitative thematic analysis approach to investigate Chinese-American parents' perspectives on early literacy development(ELD) in infants/toddlers and their home literacy environments (HLE), as well as how these environments influence emergent literacy skills. Data collection involved in-depth interviews with 12 Chinese parents residing in the United States. Findings reveal that HLE significantly shapes ELD, underscoring the critical importance of primary caregivers' home-based engagement. The study highlights the significance of immigrant/bilingual family contexts for ELD, examining how diverse approaches to implementing bilingual or English-monolingual literacy practices within immigrant households yield differential effects. Crucially, variations in parental impact beliefs and sociolinguistic perspectives were found to shape distinct pathways of emergent literacy development in infants and toddlers. This study holds important implications for both practitioners and researchers in the field of literacy development and education. Also, it supports the use of a bilingual home environment, particularly for Chinese American families, as strategies to promote infants' ELD.
Keywords: Qualitative, early literacy development (ELD), home literacy environment(HLE), Infant, Toddler, Chinese American families
Received: 23 Mar 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zou, Li, Helfrich, Chen and Sulaimani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yifan Li, liyifanhome@163.com
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