Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions of Parent–child Relationships: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

PARENT–CHILD RELATIONSHIPS are the most critical for children's social and emotional development and wellbeing. While parent–child relationship support programs are well documented, there are none designed for educators’ use within early education and care settings. To inform development of an educator program, an understanding of educators’ everyday practices, their role in supporting parent–child relationships and children's social and emotional development was sought. Educators reported the importance of parent– child relationships, yet were hesitant to engage with parents. Educators’ knowledge was primarily implicit—drawing on observations and practical experiences to build their knowledge of relationships and social and emotional development—which contributed to reluctance in sharing their knowledge with parents. Educators requested theoretical, evidence-based approaches to build further knowledge and inform everyday practices in supporting parent–child relationships. These findings are critical to the development of an educator-led parent–child relationship program for use within education and care settings.

“It’s Embedded in What We Do for Every Child”: A Qualitative Exploration of Early Childhood Educators’ Perspectives on Supporting Children’s Social and Emotional Learning

“…Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify the patterns and themes reported [56]. Our analyses were guided by the approach used by O'Connor, Nolan, Bergmeier, Williams-Smith, and Skouteris in their qualitative study investigating early childhood educator perspectives of supporting parent-child relationships and children's social and emotional development [57]. Specifically, the five phases of inductive thematic analysis used were: (i) become familiar with the data; (ii) generate initial codes; (iii) search for themes; (iv) review themes; and (v) define and name themes [56].…”

Integrating Health and Educational Perspectives to Promote Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Learning: Development of a Multi-Faceted Program Using an Intervention Mapping Approach

“…Facilitating explicit knowledge is critical for educator learning [87], however studies suggest much educator knowledge is implicit and not articulated [88]. O'Connor and colleagues [89] found early childhood educators primarily drew on implicit knowledge, through observations and practical experience, to interpret parent-child relationships and children's social and emotional development. They later developed the E-PCR program using the IM protocol to provide educators with knowledge and skills to first integrate implicit and explicit knowledge, and then translate this knowledge into their practice.…”

Partnership with families in early childhood education: Exploratory study

“…In addition to engagement in shared decision making, educators have potential to improve the parent–child relationship. Research by O’Connor et al (2018) sought to understand educators’ perceptions of their role in fostering parent–child relationships and what support they might need to do this. They found educators are well placed and are seeking resources to improve their skills and confidence to capitalise on everyday interactions with parents to nurture the parent–child relationship.…”

“…They found educators are well placed and are seeking resources to improve their skills and confidence to capitalise on everyday interactions with parents to nurture the parent–child relationship. O’Connor et al (2018) suggest that educators’ practical experience and observations of parents and children over time lay a good foundation for educators to provide support to the parent–child relationship.…”

“…Although educators understand the importance of partnering with families, many are uncertain how to do this. A study by O’Connor et al (2018) found educators were hesitant to engage with parents even though they acknowledged the importance of the parent–child relationship. Given evidence about the importance of educator–parent relationships, and as part of a large exploratory project, we explored current partnership practice across the ECEC sector asking:What are parents’ experiences of collaborative practice and what do they think their service could do better?How confident are educators in working with families?To what extent do educators believe their training prepared them to work with families, what preferences do educators have regarding training delivery and what are their training needs?…”