Forging collaborative relationships in early childhood education

1. Forging collaborative relationships in early childhood education Linda Mitchell, Senior Researcher, New Zealand Council for Educational Research

2. Structure of the workshop • Principles of integrated action and insights from NZ • Three small group discussions on collaborative relationships - with parents; between primary and early childhood teachers; with health, social services and other community organisations. • Report back. • Plenary: principles and strategies for building collaborative relationships.

3. Why integrated action? Early childhood services, acting together with families, schools, community, health and social services, can be a powerful force in strengthening educational opportunities.

4. Home environment • Children of professional parents higher levels on cognitive attainment, cooperation and confidence. • Children with young mothers (aged 13-17 at birth of child) higher levels of anti-social behaviour. • Two parent family, higher socioeconomic status and mother’s qualifications - higher cognitive outcomes. • Large family size and not having English as a first language - lower cognitive development scores.

5. Home learning environment In other words, EPPE found that it is what parents did that is more important than who they are (Melhuish, Sylva, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2001).

6. Benefits of integrated ECE . . . only combination early childhood education/family support programs affected a broad range of outcomes for both children and parents. . . . Six of 8 combination programs which sought to measure parenting benefits found positive effects, and all 4 of those which sought to measure maternal life course outcomes found benefits (Yoshikawa, 1995).

7. Integrated action The principle of integrated action recognises the multiple players in education. Success or failure is the result of many forces acting together—school and community; teachers and parents; students and their peers; Mäori and the State (Durie, 2001).

8. OECD recommendation • A systematic and integrated approach to policy development and implementation calls for a clear vision for children, from birth to 8, underlying ECEC policy, and co-ordinated policy frameworks at centralised and decentralised levels. . . . Strong links across services, professionals, and parents also promote coherence for children (OECD, 2001, p.126).

9. NZ’s ECE strategic plan goal The coming together of children and families in ECE services provides greater opportunities for addressing health and social issues. Building stronger links between ECE services, ante-natal programmes, parents and whänau, parenting programmes, schools, and health and social services can also improve a child’s educational achievement (Crown, 2002, p.9).

10. Principles of effective integrated relationships • Parents and families have strengths and expertise • An empowering approach to working with families • Shared goals and aspirations

11. Example 1 Relationships with parents Actions: • a curriculum meeting • parents to video children at the creche • parents to collect information about children’s learning • parents to observe their child at home • parents to bring their observations to the creche.

12. Supervisor’s views Anne’s was one family I did some home observations with. And I also did some photographs of her collecting up stones and putting them in bags, demonstrating enclosure schema I suppose. . . This photographic documentation from home went into her portfolio, and we also managed to . . . follow that interest at creche, photograph and document it and build on that interest.

13. Mother’s views I felt inspired after the meeting [curriculum meeting] I came to. As a parent without a doubt they value my input and are interested in finding out about home life.

14. She’s really big into mud pies. It treks through the house – water and sand. She’s very involved in construction and rolling things, making things wet and rolling them up into balls. Neat little balls like those large balls of soap. And she lines them up on the rocks around the surrounding edges of our sandpit.

15. Did getting to understand schema help you in any way to understand how you could extend her? Oh yes. It has. Very much with Anne because she has been very much a classic child to slot. My eldest one wasn’t so easy to read. But it has certainly been very helpful in understanding a child’s development so you don’t frustrate that development. You don’t get conflict. . . Anne will be the dirtiest, messiest child at creche but I don’t really care. . . . Today for example there was another 3 pieces of sticking plaster applied to my daughter’s anatomy and Bob was quite concerned. But I said “If she fell off the wall, she fell off the wall. She didn’t crack anything open. She’s fine. She’s learnt to hold on tighter.”

16. I’ve certainly focused when I’ve been parent helping on things that the children have been doing. There was one incident when I was parent helping when the children made a train out of boxes. There were some children in this train with newspapers. Obviously they had seen people on the train reading newspapers, and they had their papers out like this as if they were London commuters. And there was another child who was very much into connecting the chains. And he had these chains strung around for miles, around the circumference of the fort. As a parent I just took the video. . . . And the children love watching themselves at mat time. We created a mat time which I think is a good thing. It quietens them down before lunch. (Mother)

17. Questions for discussion: • What is your experience of involving parents in children’s learning? • What is the thinking about parents behind this approach? • What could schools and early childhood services do to work with parent in an empowering way?

18. Example 2 Curriculum alignment with schools • Closely aligned learning dispositions and key competencies • Closely connected learning environments, relationships, and images of the child • Learners who are ready, willing, and able to critique and redesign the curriculum and the world.

19. Questions for discussion • In your experience, what is the nature of the pedagogical relationship between teachers in ECE services and schools? • What is the thinking behind this approach? • What strategies could schools and ECE services use to foster pedagogical alignment between the sectors?

20. Questions for discussion • What is your service’s approach to forming relationships with health, social and community organisations? • What is the value of these relationships? Value for whom? • What role can schools and early childhood services play in strengthening these relationships?