Parents’ perspective.

Findings from this study show parents placed a high value on the importance of education, and this has been validated by other research literature. Parents said that they wanted their children to work hard and gain qualifications so they could obtain professional work. They believed that education was a tool to enable integration into New Zealand society and a way of achieving economic security for the family. Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel (2001), who undertook research in California, also reported that the Samoan participant parents in their study believed education was the route to financial security. In New Zealand, Gorinski and Fraser (2006) confirmed that Pacific Island parents, in general, placed a strong emphasis on the value of education for their children. Siope (2011), whose parents were Samoan immigrants to New Zealand, told of the sacrifice her family made so that she could enjoy the benefits of a good

education. Likewise, the importance of education was reiterated in a collection of published stories from Pacific Island people who have been educated at Victoria University, Wellington (Sanga & Chu, 2009). For example, Billy Fito’o, from the

Solomon Islands, explained how education opened the “doorway to job opportunities” (Sanga & Chu, 2009, p. 24 ). The literature indicates strongly that the aspiration to gain a good education is evident across different Pacific cultures and in different settings.

In this study, the parents’ perception that education was an important route to economic prosperity significantly influenced the way they interacted with their child. According to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, different contextual influences affect the way an individual thinks. The parent participants reflected values that are shared by other Pacific Island people who have migrated from the islands for economic reasons. They wanted to pass these values on to their children, reminding them of why the family had decided to come to New Zealand. This was the same for the migrant parents as well as the parents who had been born in New Zealand. (These values belong to the macrosystem and chronosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s model. See

Fig 1, p.34). Parents hoped that their children would understand why they set high expectations to work hard in order to gain qualifications and go to university. They wanted their children to achieve the economic security that had prompted the family to migrate from their home island one or two generations ago.

When parents place a high value on education, it can benefit the academic

achievement of their children, regardless of academic ability, ethnicity, and location (Jeynes, 2005). When parents set high expectations for their children, the children receive higher grades and stay in school longer (Yamamoto & Holloway, 2010). Minority parents can help their children to make positive educational gains through their encouragement, offsetting any incongruence between the family’s home culture and the school culture (Okagaki, 2001). However, whilst research evidence suggests that minority culture students respond positively to parents who place a high value on education, this was not necessarily the case for the Pacific Island student participants.

Despite parental high expectation not all students were motivated to work hard. A number of parents expressed concern that they could not influence their children to be more successful with their academic studies. They expressed disappointment that their child did not work hard enough or had not achieved high grades, and that they could not engage in conversation to discuss academic progress. Given the high value which the parents placed upon education, they expressed frustration with this situation. Their ability to positively influence their children’s academic progress was limited by the lack of reciprocal interaction in the home context.

The parents explained why they thought their conversations were problematic and their influence was limited. They did not understand the NCEA qualification system and found it hard to comprehend specific details about courses and grades. (In

Bronfenbrenner’s model, the NCEA system would be part of the exosystem. See Fig 1, p.34.) The parents realised that their lack of knowledge made it difficult for them to understand what their children were doing at school. Those who were not well qualified themselves found it hard to engage in conversations about academic learning at senior level. For parents to engage in conversations, they need self-belief in their

own skills and knowledge in order to feel they can make a difference (Bandura, 1997, 2000; Yamamoto & Holloway, 2010). Parents, who have low self-efficacy in terms of their own academic ability, may lack confidence in supporting their children’s learning, especially as the children progress through high school to more complex work.

However, even the participant parents who were well qualified expressed confusion about NCEA due to unfamiliarity with the examination system. They felt this

contributed to misunderstandings in conversations with their children and, in fact, the student participants echoed the same concern. They said that they found it hard to talk to their parents when their parents did not understand the academic system. A parental lack of knowledge partly explains why conversations were problematic. The children were in the position to bridge the gap between school and home. They could have facilitated conversations in the home by helping their parents to gain a better understanding of their grades and progress. The parents were aware that their child often chose not to do this.

Thus, the parents perceived an important part of their role was to explain to their child that education was the route to prosperity and, therefore, encourage their child to achieve positive academic outcomes. However, they sometimes felt ineffectual because it was difficult to engage their children in conversations about their academic progress. In part, this can be explained by the parents’ lack of knowledge of the school system and the child’s reluctance to take on a mediating role which could have bridged the gap between home and school.