Building partnerships between parents and child care staff through informal communication.
October 05, 2009
Written by Brooke Fletcher and Michal Perlman
Published in Interaction, 23, 19. Ideas: Emotional Well-Being in Child Care
Research shows that there are many benefits to building strong, supportive connections between families and school settings, including enhancing children's well-being, supporting their learning, and decreasing behaviour problems (see Fiese, Eckert, & Spagnola, 2006). Until recently, the majority of literature surrounding home-school partnerships focused on efforts to involve families in their child's education in the formal school system and on intensive interventions aimed at engaging low-income parents in their children's lives. Considerably less attention was given to the idea of involving families within the childcare setting. However, with increased maternal employment over the past several decades and the resulting rapid growth in the use of centre-based care for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, the concept that parents should be involved in the child care centre has been steadily gaining popularity. [n this article we review some of the thinking about the importance of parental child care involvement. We then describe a study in which we observed the interactions that occurred between 1,087 parents and the staff in their child's centre when they dropped their children off in the morning.
Published in Interaction, 23, 19. Ideas: Emotional Well-Being in Child Care
Research shows that there are many benefits to building strong, supportive connections between families and school settings, including enhancing children's well-being, supporting their learning, and decreasing behaviour problems (see Fiese, Eckert, & Spagnola, 2006). Until recently, the majority of literature surrounding home-school partnerships focused on efforts to involve families in their child's education in the formal school system and on intensive interventions aimed at engaging low-income parents in their children's lives. Considerably less attention was given to the idea of involving families within the childcare setting. However, with increased maternal employment over the past several decades and the resulting rapid growth in the use of centre-based care for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, the concept that parents should be involved in the child care centre has been steadily gaining popularity. [n this article we review some of the thinking about the importance of parental child care involvement. We then describe a study in which we observed the interactions that occurred between 1,087 parents and the staff in their child's centre when they dropped their children off in the morning.
