ABSTRACT
Educational discussions often revolve around the fact that parental attitudes, experience, and involvement, play a major role for the eventual school achievement of children. This is also true with respect to the education of minority children in Western industrialized societies, where the need for cooperation between school and parents is often emphasized (e.g. Delgado-Gaitan, 1990; National Clearinghouse, 1979). The role of the parent is complex, and in the case of immigrants not always very well understood by the schools. Gardner distinguishes between an active and a passive attitudinal role of the parents. They ‘play an active role when they encourage their children to do well, when they monitor their language performance, and when they reinforce any success identified by the school’ (1985:110). Parents with positive attitudes towards a second language community may also support their children in more subtle ways, while on the other hand parents with negative attitudes may inhibit the positive development of children even if they actively promote L2 achievement. A similar effect of adult attitudes on child learning and performance was described in the late 1960s by Rosenthal and Jacobson. In several studies they found that children’s school performance was highly influenced by their teachers’ expectations of them (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968).
