Teachers' experiences in communicating with pastoralist parents in rural Mongolia: implications for teacher education and school policy

One important group of people living a special lifestyle in Mongolia is mobile pastoralists. Requirements from the government of Mongolia push pastoralist parents to send their children to schools in settled areas far from their camps. This interpretative phenomenological study explored primary school classroom teachers' experiences in communicating with pastoralist parents during the school year. In-depth interviews were conducted involving six classroom teachers from a rural primary school in eastern Mongolia. We applied Bronfenbrenner's ecological model to organise our findings in our interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings indicated that classroom teachers had difficulties in communicating with pastoralist parents. The school and teachers heavily relied on a very few traditional forms of communication which was not appropriate given the pastoralist parents' unique situation. This suggested the need for preparing pre-service teachers better for partnering with pastoralist families and their extended family members, and the need for further professional development on this topic for both teachers and school leaders. Our findings were also related to some contextual factors impacting teacher communication with pastoralist parents besides teacher education. This study highlighted the implications for teacher education and school policy. Potential directions for future research were recommended.