A Qualitative Study of Mongolian Herder Parents' Involvement in and Choice of Living Arrangements for Ensuring the School Readiness of Their Young Children

For herders living in the remote countryside in Mongolia, enrolling their children in school places a huge social and financial strain on the family. As a result, many children of herder families do not participate in early childhood education and, therefore, run the risk of not being school-ready when they finally are enrolled. Specifically, according to the National Statistical Office of Mongolia (2018), 14% of preschool-age (2 to 5 years old) children do not receive preschool services, and more than 9% of these children are herder children This study was designed to qualitatively study herder parents’ involvement in and living arrangements for their young children’s readiness for formal schooling. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews of participating parents with open-ended questions, along with socioeconomic status information and observation field notes. Subjects included 36 herder families. Purposive and criterion sampling was used with the following two criteria: To participate, families (a) must be full-time herders; and (b) must have a five-year-old child anticipated to start school the following autumn. Children were selected from three different categories: (a) children who attended kindergartens, (b) children who attended alternative programs, and (c) children who had no access to preschool education. After being transcribed and translated into English, the data were analyzed using the following steps: organizing and preparing the data for analysis, reading through all data, conducting analysis based on the theoretical framework, identifying themes, representing the data, and interpreting the larger meaning of the data. Results showed that the herders participating in the study wanted their children to have a better education and they did not want their children to become herders like them; yet they stated that they did not find childrearing hard. The physical setting, the childcare taker’s psychology, and daily rituals influenced parents’ decision on which preschool education option to choose for their child.