Turkish Pre-service Early Childhood Teachers' Thoughts Regarding Parent Engagement, Involvement and Education

Parents, regarded as a key factor and a forefront factor impacting children's growth, development and education, are the inseparable part of children’s education. Hence, the need for making parents a part of children’s... [ view full abstract ]

Parents, regarded as a key factor and a forefront factor impacting children's growth, development and education, are the inseparable part of children’s education. Hence, the need for making parents a part of children’s education has leaded to rise of such different terms as parent involvement, parent education and parent engagement. Parent involvement is defined as the interaction of parents with school and children’s learning, while parent education is seen as a way of involving parents in education and defined as an instruction to have an understanding of how to be parents. However, parent engagement is defined in different ways as engagement of parents in children’s learning and experiences or as engagement of parents in children’s life to affect their all experiences. In this regard, whilst engagement is defined as ‘‘a formal way to meet someone or to do something, especially as part of public duties’’, involvement is defined as getting involved in a situation or an activity (Macmillan Dictionary, 2009-2012b). Based on aforementioned definitions, it is obvious to say that parent engagement necessitates more self-devotion to activity and process. It can be inferred that it is important to be aware of teachers’ thoughts regarding these terms in order to provide children with a greater advantage during their education life. In order to shed light on what early childhood teacher candidates think about the differences among the three; parent involvement, parent engagement and parent education the study aims to understand thoughts of pre-service early childhood teachers on the subjects. Data will be collected from pre-service early childhood teachers through a semi-structured interview. Results are expected to clarify pre-service teachers’ thoughts regarding the abovementioned subjects and to guide for future studies.

Keywords: Parent education, parent involvement, parent engagement, early childhood teachers

Reference

Macmillan Dictionary. (2009-2012b). ‘‘Engagement’’. Accessed February 31, 2017.