An analysis of parental involvement during Zoom-mediated heritage language instruction

Abstract

<p>Linguistic diversity has been increasing rapidly in Australian and New Zealand societies, and according to the most recent census (ABS, 2022) more than one in fiveAustralian households speak a language other than English. Fostering bilingualism is important atall levels of education because it plays a crucial role in identity development (Caldas, 2006) and enhancesacademic performance (Han, 2012" Lindholm-Leary, 2016" Yurtsever et al., 2023). The home environment is obviously crucial for bilingual development(Mak et al., 2023)but broader community engagement is also needed. With heritage language communities often distributed broadly across contexts such as Australiaand New Zealand,technology mediated language learning approaches (e.g., Zoom) hold strong potential in systematic efforts to promote bilingualism.A keyelement of effective online education is the quality of involvement of stakeholders, and in the case of online heritage language education involving young learners, parental involvementis crucial (El Nokali et al., 2010" Yang et al., 2023). To date, however, the involvement of parents in online heritage language education has not been adequately researched.</p>