Parents May Hold the Key to How Children Learn Indonesian as a Foreign Language

When children learn a foreign language, the classroom is only part of the story. A new study of young learners of Indonesian as a foreign language, known by its Indonesian acronym BIPA, suggests that what happens at home may matter just as much as what happens in lessons. Researchers from Universitas Negeri Malang, working with a colleague from the Adventist University of Africa, found that children who perceived their parents as more involved in their language learning also reported more positive attitudes toward Indonesian and used the language more often in everyday life.

The study, published in Discover Education, surveyed 34 children aged 7 to 12 who were enrolled in a BIPA program in Malang, Indonesia. The participants came from families with roots in twelve different countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Germany, South Korea, Thailand, China, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia. Data were collected between October and November 2025 using a questionnaire administered in Indonesian, with written informed consent obtained from the children’s parents or legal guardians before any data were gathered.

The researchers designed the survey around three distinct constructs. The first was perceived parental involvement, meaning how much children felt their parents supported and engaged with their Indonesian language learning. The second was attitudes toward Indonesian, an affective measure covering children’s interest, comfort, and evaluation of the language. The third was Indonesian language use practices, a behavioral measure of how often children reported actually using Indonesian in daily communication, such as conversations with parents at home and outside it. The authors deliberately separated attitudes from use, arguing that a child can feel positively about a language without necessarily speaking it often if opportunities for communication are limited.

Methodologically, the study took a quantitative, cross-sectional correlational approach. The 23-item questionnaire, rated on a five-point agreement scale, was reviewed by a child BIPA learning expert who helped simplify wording so that statements would be concrete and understandable for children in the 7-to-12 age range. All three scales showed adequate internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from .794 to .901, and corrected item-total correlations all exceeded the conventional 0.30 threshold. The researchers were careful to note that the review by a single expert constitutes initial evidence of content suitability rather than a full validation of the instrument.

Before running their main analyses, the team checked the statistical assumptions behind their methods. Shapiro-Wilk tests indicated that scores for perceived parental involvement did not significantly depart from normality, but scores for attitudes toward Indonesian and language use practices did. In response, the researchers ran Spearman rank-order correlations as a sensitivity analysis alongside the primary Pearson correlations. They also assessed discriminant validity among the three constructs using the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations, or HTMT, with bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap confidence intervals based on 5,000 resamples.

The core results were striking. Perceived parental involvement was positively and significantly related to attitudes toward Indonesian, with a Pearson correlation of r = .684 (p < .001), and even more strongly related to Indonesian language use practices, with r = .800 (p < .001). Attitudes and use were themselves correlated at r = .659 (p < .001). The Spearman sensitivity analyses confirmed the same pattern, with rank-order coefficients between .731 and .813, indicating that the findings did not depend on the choice of correlation method.

Simple linear regression models reinforced the picture. Perceived parental involvement explained an R-squared of .468 for attitudes toward Indonesian and .640 for Indonesian language use practices. In other words, roughly 47 percent of the variation in children’s language attitudes and 64 percent of the variation in their self-reported use of Indonesian was statistically associated with how involved they perceived their parents to be. The authors caution, however, that because each model contained only a single predictor, the standardized beta coefficients are numerically identical to the Pearson correlations, and the regression results should be read as a complement to the correlation analysis rather than independent evidence of a stronger relationship.

The theoretical framing draws on family language policy and language socialization research. Citing Spolsky’s view of the family as a domain where values and orientations toward language develop through everyday communication, the authors argue that parental support, attention, and appreciation for Indonesian may shape how children perceive the language as useful and relevant. On the behavioral side, they connect the findings to second language acquisition theory, noting that acquisition depends not only on comprehensible input but on opportunities to use the language in meaningful communication. Within the family, parental involvement may create exactly those opportunities for children to hear, try, and practice Indonesian outside the classroom.

The study also positions itself against the backdrop of existing BIPA research, which has concentrated largely on classroom matters: learning evaluation, teaching materials, instructional strategies, and the integration of Indonesian culture into lessons. By contrast, empirical work on the family’s role in children’s BIPA learning has been scarce. The authors argue that their participants occupy an unusual position, because Indonesian is not merely a subject they study but a language present in their schools, public spaces, and social lives. Parental involvement may therefore help children bridge formal classroom learning with authentic use of the language in the wider environment.

The researchers are careful about the limits of what their data can show. The cross-sectional design captures relationships at a single point in time and cannot establish causality or temporal sequence. The sample of 34 children was recruited through purposive sampling, the measures relied on children’s self-reports rather than direct observation of family communication, the instrument was reviewed by only one expert, and no control variables were included. The HTMT values also showed that the constructs, while empirically distinguishable, were closely related, with the pair involving language use practices approaching or slightly exceeding the conservative .85 threshold, a reminder that the boundaries between these concepts are not absolute.

Even with those caveats, the practical implications are intriguing. The authors suggest that children’s BIPA programs could treat families as partners in language learning, for example through shared reading, conversation practice, or communication tasks built around daily activities. They stress that the effectiveness of such strategies has not been tested in this study and would require intervention and longitudinal research before broad recommendations could be made. Future work, they write, should involve larger and more diverse samples, directly measure family language repertoires and home communication practices, and assess children’s actual proficiency alongside exposure at school and in the social environment. For now, the message for educators and families alike is that the path to a child’s second language may run straight through the living room.

Subject of Research: The relationship between perceived parental involvement, language attitudes, and Indonesian language use among child BIPA learners

Article Title: Perceived parental involvement, language attitudes, and Indonesian language use among child BIPA learners

Article References: Muzaki, H., Suyitno, I., Susanto, G., Andajani, K., Prameswari, R. W. G., & Bonde, L. (2026). Perceived parental involvement, language attitudes, and Indonesian language use among child BIPA learners. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 808. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02060-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02060-1

Keywords: parental involvement, BIPA, Indonesian language, child learners, language attitudes, language use practices, second language acquisition, family language policy, correlational study, Discover Education, language socialization, Perceived