Reconstruction of Transnational Educational Strategies through Parent-child Interaction: A Case Study of High School Students of Brazilian Schools in Japan

In recent years, interest in studying at Japanese universities or studying abroad in a third country has increased among students enrolled in Brazilian high schools in Japan. However, although the career options of Brazilian school students have expanded, their parents’ perceptions of this situation and the ways in which these perceptions are reflected in their transnational educa tional strategies have not yet been clarified. Therefore, this study sets forth the following research questions to clarify how the parents of Brazilian school students reconstruct their transnational educational strategies as they interact with their children in the face of socioeconomic changes in Japan. This study examined the following research questions based on interviews with Brazilian high school students and their parents: (1) What educational strategies did these parents originally employ? (2) What factors affected chang es in these strategies? (3) What strategies emerged through negotiations between these parents and their children? (4) What difficulties do Brazilian fami lies face in implementing these new strategies? The results of this research revealed that the educational strategies of Japanese-Brazilian families are no longer premised on returning to Brazil, contrary to the findings of previous studies. Instead, both the parents and the chil dren of these families now envision the children’s futures in Japan or a third country. In other words, transnational education strategies are fluid. In the pro cess of family adaptation to Japanese society, these strategies are transformed by macro and micro factors, including parent-child interactions in the home.