Implementation of Home-School Collaboration in Kindergarten

Introduction

Kids learn well when the critical grownups in their lives, such as parents and the public members, work as a team to inspire and give support to them. The school alone cannot solely address the entire kid’s developmental requirements, which necessitates the participation of both the parents and family members to provide significant support. The requirement for a strengthened corporation between schools and families to educate their kids is a formality as the two often meet to discuss the child’s progress. Besides their involvement in the governance, the parents are obliged to attend a parent-teacher conference, encouraging kids to complete their homework and serving as teacher aides and mentors.

When schools adopt syllabuses based on actual-world difficulties and data, families can significantly contribute through sharing immediate information about the history, work, interests, and individual experience either physically or through computer devices. Home school collaboration has been widely researched and is testified to be mutually advantageous for kids, educators, and families (Collier et al., 2020). Some of the benefits of the collaboration include positive attitudes towards schools, better attendance, improvement of academic results, and fewer grade retention. This essay aims to explore the needs of parents and the requirements of kindergarten in home-school collaboration, design a year plan of home-school collaboration, and suggest the tactics for practical and feasible practices.

The needs of Parents and the requirements of kindergarten in home school collaboration

Schools need to build partnerships with parents to conform to the joined support structure for their children; this would generate shared responsibility for kids’ accomplishment in the educational system. In this context, parental participation improves, and parents are encouraged to back the schools, reflecting a successful educational system. The participation of parents begins at home with the provision of a safe and healthful atmosphere with positive attitude about school, and relevant learning experiences. According to Harris & Robinson (2016), parents should comprehend effective parental involvement practices to promote a child’s achievement.

There is a need for an improved process that describes and supports efficient communication practices between school and home with clear borders and protocols for collaboration; this contributes positively to the betterment of the child and enables general learning results. Research has revealed that the child and families benefit when the partnerships comprise of the support that assists families in learning how to implement the learning strategies while at home. While creating more effective collaboration, learning partnerships between the school and parents are critical for every stakeholder. There have been certain advantages for families of children with learning barriers, where home-school collaboration can assist in ensuring that the individual learning needs of the student are addressed.

Early childhood educators believe in the significance of developing a solid foundation in the early years of education because the skills and knowledge influence their success in life. Consequentially, parents and teachers need to maximize the children’s learning experience in the crucial years. One method of realizing effective collaboration between school and home is the association between the two benefits kids learning in all areas. In a recent study, the home-school collaboration practices, particularly in the kindergarten, have shown a positive effect as efforts exerted by both parties to support children’s learning, hence minimizing the chances of failure.

Home-school collaborations increase the motivation to learn among young children and are vital for specific foundational skills required for academic success and continually affect the kids’ lives. It has been established that home-school collaboration is advantageous to children and realizing that it is both exciting and challenging, it is essential to consider the practices of schools and the teachers. Therefore, schools should understand that the success of the collaboration depends heavily upon them; the emphasis should be put on having a collaborative parent-teacher partnership (Lau & Ng, 2019). Particular roles of both teachers and parents have to be clarified first. Collaboration is crucial for parents to be guided and supported in the journey to taking part in the education of their children,

According to Bang (2018), parents need support and guidance on how to facilitate and teach their kids in learning skills and values and obtain information through parents and teacher collaboration. Parents require the skills to teach their kids because irrespective of teachers’ capability and excellence in their strategies, parents still require to follow up and improve the skills at home to ensure meaningful learning.

Relevant Practices According to the Theory about the Six Types of Parental Involvement

The theory of Epstein’s overlapping spheres of influence is an essential tool for comprehending how collaborative building relationships between homes and schools can be advantageous in children learning (Ma et al., 2016). With regard to how social framework connects, Epstein created an organizing framework that plans six areas of shared responsibility. The curriculum framework, upon understanding the child’s development, highlights why parents must understand the scope, processes, nature, and influencing factors on the kid’s development so that they make adequate provisions in the protection and care and fostering the kid’s development with real potentials.

The theory comprises six areas: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating with the community (Đurišić & Bunijevac, 2017). The home-school collaboration should be multi-dimensional that covers all the mentioned areas. Every area of the collective obligation has its specific problems that need be resolved to attain the families and generate constructive outcomes. To make a justifiable transformation for all the young kids, several settings need to be in place, such as successful home-school collaboration, strategic planning, commitment to review the design, and recommending community involvement at every leadership level.

A YEAR PLAN FOR COLLABORATION

LIST OF EVENTS FOR THE SIX TYPES OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Tactics for the Practical and Feasible Practices

Parental involvement in schools is hardly enough to positively affect the child’s achievements; instead, parental engagement should be maximized. It is vital that the initiatives be goal-oriented and subject-specific to encourage parents to be involved in the home-school activities (Jafarov, 2015). The need to identify the processes that will support collaboration given all the factors, identification of what both parties acknowledge as suitable process to help with the development of a home-school collaboration partnership, and clarify the particular parent and teacher roles which may enable parties to perform an active role and empowered role in the child’s education. Some important tactics include parent participation in making decisions at schools, alignment of school’s guidelines about homework and parent-teacher conferences, having a unique discussion of the functions of parents, children, teachers around compacts, teaching standards, and homework procedures. Outreach can be made via family nights, home visits, and a family resource library.

Through working as a team, tutors, parents, managers, business persons and other members of the community can develop an effective educational program that fulfils the requirement of the local kindergarten school. This would reflect on the diversity within the school without any compromise to higher performance expectations and standards. As a chairperson of the Home-School Collaboration Committee, implementation of this design is probable and would foster a considerate and sensitive school environment that compliments and answers to both the differences and similarities of learners.

References

Bang, Y. S. (2018). Parents’ Perspectives on How Their Behaviors Impede Parent-Teacher Collaboration. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 46(11), 1787-1799.

Collier, M., Shenoy, S., Ovitt, B., Lin, Y. L., & Adams, R. (2020). Educational Diagnosticians’ Role in Home-School Collaboration: The Impact of Efficacy and Perceptions of Support. School Community Journal, 30(1), 33-58.

Đurišić, M., & Bunijevac, M. (2017). Parental involvement is a critical factor for successful education. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 7(3), 137-153.

Durisic, M., & Bunijevac, M. (2017). Parental Involvement as an Important Factor for Successful Education. CEPS Journal, 7(3), 137-153.

Harris, A. L., & Robinson, K. (2016). A new framework for understanding parental involvement: Setting the stage for academic success. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(5), 186-201.

Jafarov, J. (2015). Factors affecting parental involvement in education: The analysis of literature.

Ma, X., Shen, J., Krenn, H. Y., Hu, S., & Yuan, J. (2016). A meta-analysis of the relationship between learning outcomes and parental involvement during early childhood and elementary education. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 771-801.

Webster-Stratton, C., & Bywater, T. (2015). Incredible Partnerships: Parents and Teachers Working Together to Enhance Outcomes for Children Through a Multi-modal Evidence-Based Programme. Journal of Children Services, 10(3), 202-217.