This project in six early childhood education centres combined professional development with action research to support ways in which teachers, and parents and whānau worked together to enhance children’s learning and wellbeing.
Where partnerships with parents developed, consciously formulated actions and strategies created a welcoming environment. Parents identified affective factors as the most important characteristic of a good early childhood education service.
Centres devised unique ways to integrate action between home and the centre, such as a diary going home with a different child each week, where the parents could record stories, provide photos and drawings of the child’s experiences at home. A value of the project was to identify ways of finding out parent views, and the opportunity for critical discussion of data to surface surprising aspects, such as gender-based assumptions.
Child outcomes were not a focus but the research that makes the link between this “working together” and child outcomes is surveyed in the report. Interviews suggested that including parents in curriculum, planning and assessment discussions had consequences for children: parents became more understanding of their own child’s learning; children seemed to benefit.
Key Results
Although the contexts were very different, some themes were common to all six centres. Where partnerships with parents/whänau developed, these were based on mutual respect. Centres made connecting with parents a priority, and some formulated specific practices to create a welcoming atmosphere. Without mutual respect, divisiveness made it difficult to enhance relationships and communication with parents/whänau.
Teachers found out what parents’ views and interests were and constructed practices to engage with those interests. A range of strategies to ascertain views was used, including: using parent social occasions and meetings to discuss views; surveying parents and whānau (in one centre parents undertook the survey and analysed the responses); developing innovative ways to find out about the home context and experiences; and discussing values and aspirations with parents/whānau.
Teachers and parents focused on pedagogy and children’s learning and wellbeing through:
- parents contributing to assessment, planning, and evaluation;
- teachers explaining the curriculum and environment without educational jargon, and in ways that suited the centre community and engaged participants; and
- teachers inviting parent involvement in the education programme.
Some “hard issues continued to be challenging, in particular, responding to parents’ desire for formal “literacy” teaching, and working with parents from multicultural backgrounds.
Professional development processes that were especially successful in helping teachers learn used data from the teachers’ own settings and gave teachers access to a range of views. Data were able to be analysed and challenged teachers to critique their own interactions and attitudes.