Erlam, RosemaryWang, Siyi2024-12-192024-12-192024https://hdl.handle.net/2292/70888Children’s bilingual development is widely studied and explored by educators and researchers. Many studies investigate children’s bilingual development at different ranges of ages across the world (Gelir, 2023; Paradis & Jia, 2017; MacLeod et al., 2022; Xue et al., 2019; Yazici et al., 2010; Yang, 2021; Zheng, 2009). However, few studies focus on children’s first two years of school life within the context of New Zealand. The aim of this study is to examine how parents and primary school teachers are enhancing New Zealand-Chinese children’s bilingual development in Year 1 and Year 2. This qualitative study adopted semi-structured interviews with parents (n=4) and teachers (n=2) whose children or students were in Year 1 or Year 2, attending schools in Auckland, New Zealand. This study emphasises the role of parents and teachers in supporting children’s bilingual development. Results indicate that both participating parents and teachers acknowledged the importance of Chinese language development. Given the investigation of how the limited number of participants facilitated children’s bilingual development and the challenges they encountered, this study analysed possible ways parents and teachers might be supported to encourage children’s bilingual development. By documenting parents’ and teachers’ voices in regard to their experiences and perspectives on supporting children’s bilingual development, this study contributes to the literature on how children are supported by their parents and teachers to enhance their bilingual development within the context of New Zealand and provides some implications for parents, teachers, and other educational professionals to reflect on improvements.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmThesisCopyright: the authorAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/