Immersion education has been an educational experiment of remarkable success and growth, in both a European and an international context. Immersion models can be found in many European countries, in a variety of different forms (e.g. ‘foreign’ language immersion in Austria and Hungary, and ‘heritage’ language immersion in Spain, Scotland, Wales and Ireland). A large body of research exists on the outcomes and benefits of immersion education (e.g. Cummins, 2000). Similarly, a parallel educational research strand has concluded that parent involvement in a child’s education is one of the greatest predictors of a child’s academic and social success at school (e.g. Epstein & Salinas, 2004). However, relatively little research exists on the nature of parental involvement in an immersion education context, despite the fact that this model has become more common internationally. Heritage immersion education places a unique set of demands on parents whose children are learning through a language in which they may have limited proficiency. These demands impact on every aspect of educational partnership, from interactions with the school and its staff, to supporting homework. While some research exists on migrant parents whose children are being ‘submersed’ in the dominant language of the society (e.g. the case of Hispanic children's English-medium education in U.S. schools), this has tended to adopt a ‘deficit’ view of parents, whereby they are seen as lacking the necessary skills to be active partners in their child’s education and offered interventions that include ESL training, training in parenting skills, general parent education, and teaching parents about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship (e.g. Bermudez & Marquez, 1996). Such an intervention model would not be appropriate for parents in immersion in the Irish context, since they tend, on average, to be of higher SES, well-educated, and have a first language which is the majority language of their country, though they may lack proficiency in the language of the school. These parents are choosing the immersion model for very different reasons to their migrant counterparts in other countries, and so face a very different set of challenges to becoming successfully involved in the education process. The aim of this research is to explore for the first time the exact nature of the challenges to such immersion parents who may have limited proficiency in the target language, and to devise strategies to enable parents to re-assess their role as valuable educational partners despite this linguistic limitation.

Mixed methods were used to explore the experiences of a group of immersion parents, focusing on their involvement in their child’s education (e.g. helping with homework, support for school activities, involvement in committees etc. in school) and any challenges that they face. Qualitative data were collected in interviews with parents initially, and based on analysis of this interview data, a questionnaire was developed and dispersed to a national sample of parents throughout Ireland, in order to explore the extent of any problems identified in the qualitative stage.

The results of this survey will be discussed in the context of immersion schooling in Ireland and international data on parents in immersion in North America and mainland Europe. One intended outcome is the identification of possible ways of addressing the needs of such parents and these will be developed as an intervention programme to be piloted in a number of immersion schools. The intervention will be designed to promote parental involvement, to engage parents who may for a variety of reasons have felt excluded from their child’s education, to help schools to empower parents to develop a different mode as educational partners, and to provide practical support for parents to enable them to take a more active role in the education of their child.