engleski

Teachers’ Opinion on the Possibilities of Collaboration with Parents

Although the majority of education policies in certain countries acknowledge the importance of collaboration between pre-school educational institutions (kindergartens) and families as an undisputable benefit for children, its forms are generally not defined in a clear way. Most often, only the formal administrative information is prescribed, while informal methods represent teachers’ choice. Therefore, it is important to research teachers’ opinions on their collaboration with parents. The research was conducted in two pre-school institutions featuring two different regions of the Republic of Croatia, and involved two similar samples. Research was done according to appropriate ethical standards. Participation in the research was completely anonymous and voluntary. The revised version of the Parent Survey of Family and Community instrument (Sheldon and Epstein, 2007) was used. The reliability of the used scale (0.76 <λ <0.88) corresponds to the original. Giving information to parents about the children’s development was recognized as the most common cause for collaboration with teachers (M = 3.44 ; SD = 592) while counselling of parenting was recognized as the least common (M = 2.85 ; SD = 615). Although educators provided a positive estimate of the inclusion of parents in the education of their children, a negative correlation of this estimate was determined with the teachers’ number of years of work experience. Research results indicate that the current formal education of teachers is insufficient in regard to the development of professional skills needed for their collaboration with parents, which concurs with the result of recent research on the topic worldwide.

: forms of educator-parent collaboration; collaboration causes

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