Sharing Care and Education: Parents' Perspectives

Abstract

In Early Childhood services the goal of parent-teacher interactions is to involve parents in the development of a shared caring, rearing and educational experience for children. Yet little investigation has been undertaken to seek out parents' own ideas and suggestions about how they can and might wish to share the care and education of their young children. This paper reports an investigation that used focus groups to identify parents' perspectives detailing what is important to them and their suggestions about how such sharing could be achieved. Four themes were developed from focus group data. These related to methods staff used to report information to parents, omissions of pertinent information, limitations of communication methods used and parent's contributions. Based on these parents' perspectives, teachers' sharing is ‘inside out’ and inwardly focused. Parents suggested teachers rethink their approach to ‘parent engagement’ so parents can positively influence the quality of care and education their children receive.

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