Masters Thesis

Socioeconomic/cultural factors and parental attitudes toward bilingual education

Though an attitudinal survey of 100 parents who enrolled their children in Japanese foreign language and/or Japanese-English bilingual programs, this study attempts to gather deeper insight on parents’ perceptions toward bilingual education. Parents were sorted according to voting status and asked to rate their ideals and realistic expectations toward their child’s language development in English and Japanese. It was found that: (1) all parents had equally low expectations for their child’s future Japanese literacy skills, (2) voter parents predicted that their child would underperform in both Japanese literacy and conversation, and (3) only non-voter parents foresaw their child failing to meet English literacy and conversation ideals and underperforming in reality. Overall, the results indicate a rather bleak outlook on bilingual education by participating parents. Whether it be voters perceiving hardship with Japanese or non-voters with English, neither groups believed that their child could develop high levels of fluency in two languages.

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