TY - JOUR
T1 - Building parents’ understandings of quality early childhood education and care and early learning and development
T2 - changing constructions to change conversations
AU - Fenech, Marianne
AU - Salamon, Andi
AU - Stratigos, Tina
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported financially and in-kind by KU Children's Services and Goodstart Early Learning. The authors gratefully acknowledge the constructive feedback received from two reviewers of an earlier version of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 EECERA.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Educator-parent partnerships have long been constructed in a discourse of improving outcomes for children. Notwithstanding the value of parent engagement for children's learning, development and wellbeing, this paper calls for a broader construction. In the context of marketised provisioning in which parents generally operate as uninformed consumers, the paper proposes a positioning of parent engagement that builds parents' understandings about quality ECEC and early learning and development, and which operates from a strengths-based platform. Findings from an Australian study that explored such a positioning from the perspective of five centre directors highlight the challenges involved, with participants exercising different degrees of intentionality. Those who actively sought to build parents' understandings demonstrated a professionalism that viewed parents from a strengths-based perspective, and strategically used time with parents and educators to undertake this work as part of their daily practice. In contrast, the less intentional participants appeared to comply with a marketised framing of parents as consumers, whose real or perceived needs took priority.
AB - Educator-parent partnerships have long been constructed in a discourse of improving outcomes for children. Notwithstanding the value of parent engagement for children's learning, development and wellbeing, this paper calls for a broader construction. In the context of marketised provisioning in which parents generally operate as uninformed consumers, the paper proposes a positioning of parent engagement that builds parents' understandings about quality ECEC and early learning and development, and which operates from a strengths-based platform. Findings from an Australian study that explored such a positioning from the perspective of five centre directors highlight the challenges involved, with participants exercising different degrees of intentionality. Those who actively sought to build parents' understandings demonstrated a professionalism that viewed parents from a strengths-based perspective, and strategically used time with parents and educators to undertake this work as part of their daily practice. In contrast, the less intentional participants appeared to comply with a marketised framing of parents as consumers, whose real or perceived needs took priority.
KW - advocacy
KW - child care choice
KW - Early childhood education
KW - parent partnerships
KW - quality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070498157&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1350293X.2019.1651972
DO - 10.1080/1350293X.2019.1651972
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85070498157
SN - 1350-293X
VL - 27
SP - 706
EP - 721
JO - European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
JF - European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
IS - 5
ER -