Economic immigrant parents’ educational involvement in Prince Edward Island

As a strategy for addressing the issues of aging population and economic development, the Canadian government collaborated with provinces and territories and continued to develop policies and programs to recruit substantial economic immigrants in recent decades. Many economic immigrants choose Canada as a destination country because of its quality education systems and services for their children, and they also eagerly search opportunities to engage in their children’s schooling after landing in Canada. The purpose of this study was to investigate economic immigrants’ parental involvement in their children’s education in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. Specifically, this research examined (1) immigrant’s obligations and expectations while involving themselves in children’s education; (2) immigrants’ parental involvement in children’s education; (3) the essential challenges and issues influencing immigrants’ parental involvement; and, (4) immigrants’ perception for their educational involvement in public schools. Answers to these topics are critical for schools, educators, and parents as they will eventually inform the best policy, program, and practices supporting immigrants’ parental involvement in education. Informed by Epstein's (2001) Parental Involvement Framework, McNeal (1999) and Coleman's (1988) Social Capital Theory, this research study adopted a qualitative research design to understand economic immigrants’ experiences and perception of their parental involvement in Canadian public schools. Eight immigrant parents from five different countries voluntarily participated in the study. Data analysis revealed four major sources for immigrants to collect needed information, eight challenges and five requests calling to inform their parental involvement in education. The immigrants not only hold high expectations for their children, but also actively involve themselves in home-based learning and parent-teacher communications. However, these parents scarcely had opportunities entering the role of leadership and not engaging in community collaboration mainly due to language barriers and culture differences. Recommendations generated from the findings include offering immigrant parents workshops on Canadian education and cultures, and fostering cross-cultural sensitiveness for family-school communication through professional development for educators