Educators’ views on parents’ participation on three different identified levels

Authors

• Tuulikki Venninen University of Helsinki, Finland
• Karoliina Purola University of Helsinki, Finland

Keywords:

Parent-teacher partnership, participation, early childhood education

Abstract

Ongoing discussions emphasize parents’ participation as a pivotal element of early childhood education. In this paper, we will discuss the challenges to supporting parents’ participation in Finnish day care centres. The article is based on the qualitative inquiry (2011) about parents’ and staff participation in the metropolitan area day care centres. The participants were 1,588 working teams representing 5,262 employees. The questionnaire was returned by 77.6% of the intended population. The results showed, there were roughly three different respondent groups. Most of them listed different matters in which parents could not participate, but they thought that there were also some areas, in which parents could participate more than they do today. Some of the respondents had a broader view on those issues, and they thought that it is possible to support parents participating in the day care centre. Indeed, some of the respondents thought that if parents came along to the activities in the day care centres, it would complicate and disturb the work of professionals. The different attitudes concerning how educator`s view their selves in relation to the parents become apparent and three different groups were identified: the Professional standpoint, Customer standpoint, and Partnership standpoint.