Contextual Factors Impacting School and Pastoralist Family Communication in Rural Mongolia: A Partial Ecological Model

Authors

Batdulam Sukhbaatar Dr, Mongolian National Council for Education AccreditationFollow
Klara Tarko Dr, University of Szeged and MTA-SZTE Health Promotion Research GroupFollow

Abstract

This study developed a partial ecological model of contextual factors impacting school and pastoralist family communication at the primary school level in rural Mongolia based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. To develop the model, we interviewed 10 classroom teachers and 10 pastoralist parents from two remote county schools in eastern Mongolia. During our interpretative phenomenological analysis based on semi-structured interviews, we found eight contextual factors impacting rural school and pastoralist family communication located at the exosystem and the macrosystem levels. The partial ecological model can be used in teacher education programs providing a greater insight into the contexts of school-family communication for pre-service and in-service teachers and for teacher educators and policy makers. The model could also be a foundational model for communication training in teacher education courses. In this respect, the current study may help inform researchers and education policy makers not only in Mongolia but also in other settings.

Keywords

pastoralist children, school-family communication, ecological systems theory, government policy, teacher education, interpretative phenomenological analysis

Author Bio(s)

Batdulam Sukhbaatar is a senior officer at Mongolian National Council for Education Accreditation and she teaches in graduate programs at Dornod University, Mongolia. She has a bachelor’s degree in primary education teaching from a local Teacher Training College in Mongolia and a master’s degree in human sciences from Osaka University, Japan. She earned her Ph.D. in educational sciences at University of Szeged, Hungary. Her research focuses on parental involvement, teacher education and higher education. Please direct correspondence to dulammn1@gmail.com

Klára Tarkó (F), Ph.D. habil. is a College Professor, Head of the Institute of Applied Health Sciences and Environmental Education, Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education, University of Szeged; Sociologist and teacher of English and Physics. She carried out her Ph.D. research in Educational Sciences, in the topic of reading comprehension, learning and metacognition, and since 2000 she focuses on minority studies and lifestyle research. She was project coordinator and sub-programme coordinator of EU funded teaching material development projects. She leads a practice-based education in Health promotion and Minority studies on different forms of university education. She is the head of the Health Promoting Minority Coordinator postgraduate and in-service training. She is elected vice-president at large for the Executive Committee of ISA RC13 Sociology of Leisure for the period of 2014-2018, and now serving as a Board Member. Please direct correspondence to tarko.klara@szte.hu

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Civil Society Scholar Awards of the Open Society Foundations [IN2017-37074] and the Research Programme for Public Education Development of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editors, and Dr. John David Campbell for their reviews and invaluable suggestions.

Publication Date

8-12-2022

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2022.5511

Recommended APA Citation

Sukhbaatar, B., & Tarko, K. (2022). Contextual Factors Impacting School and Pastoralist Family Communication in Rural Mongolia: A Partial Ecological Model. The Qualitative Report, 27(8), 1638-1659. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2022.5511

ORCID ID

0000-0003-0207-3601

ResearcherID

Scopus Author ID: 57208011056