This article describes qualitative findings from a mixed methods exploratory study of parental involvement in the heritage immersion context of Ireland. The research aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature of home-school relations in this less usual educational setting. Three studies were designed in order to address this objective. Study 1 was a mixed methods investigation of the topic from the perspective of parents, involving a series of in-depth interviews and a self-report parental involvement survey. Study 2 was a qualitative exploration of educators’ experiences of parental involvement in an immersion setting. Study 3 was also qualitative in design and explored the topic at hand from the perspectives of immersion pupils. Findings indicated that there are distinct challenges to parental involvement in the context where the language of the home and the language of the school differ. Implications for practice in immersion schools are considered.

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Background: There is increasing recognition of the contribution of affective factors such as motivation to the development of reading competence. Reading activity is theorised to mediate associations between motivation and achievement, but this has been tested empirically only rarely. Method: This study employed structural equation modelling to test a hypothesised model of relations between the reading self-concept, intrinsic motivation, activity and achievement of a sample of 4,067 grade 6 students in Ireland and to explore whether the relations were moderated by gender or socioeconomic status (SES). Results: Intrinsic motivation and self-concept were significantly associated with reading activity, which, in turn, significantly predicted reading achievement. Girls had higher intrinsic motivation and reading activity than boys, but there was no gender difference in reading self-concept. High-SES students had higher reading self-concept, intrinsic motivation and activity than low-SES and medium-SES students. The strength of the associations among the constructs under study did not vary by gender or SES. Conclusions: Findings suggest that efforts aimed at increasing students' intrinsic reading motivation may lead to increased reading activity and reading competence, irrespective of gender or SES.

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Ideologies on linguistic variation among teachers of the Irish language are the focus of this article. Participants completed an experiment in which they responded to speech samples representing traditional dialectal varieties in the Irish-speaking communities (the Gaeltacht) and a sample representing the Irish of new speakers outside the Gaeltacht (the post-Gaeltacht). When participants directly rate the speech varieties, the traditional Gaeltacht samples are rated significantly more positively than the post-Gaeltacht sample. However, the post-Gaeltacht new speaker variety is on top for standardness. When participants rate the speakers' characteristics, a more levelled, destandardised value system is also evident. The results are related to the official regimentation of Irish today, where authority is increasingly nebulous and negotiable. The results illustrate how teacher ideologies can develop in late modernity, whether in a minority context, in a context where authority is based on authenticity and a dialect ideology is established, or where language transmission occurs largely through education and substantial numbers of new speakers use the language.