Building parents’ understandings of quality early childhood education and care and early learning and development: changing constructions to change conversations

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.