The Exploring Teacher-Family Partnerships in Infant Center-based Care

Abstract

Teacher-family partnership are elements of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). Nevertheless, the need for better understanding such partnerships and factors influencing it particularly for children under three is underlined. This study compares teachers’ and mothers’ reports regarding real and ideal partnership practices, exploring child, ECEC and family level predictors of partnership. Mothers and teachers of 90 infants answered the Real-Ideal Teacher-parents Partnership Scale (Gaspar, 1996). Classroom quality was observed with CLASS-Infants (Hamre et al., 2014); home environment with HOME (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984); child temperament with IBQ (Rothbart, 1981). Results show that both mothers and teachers report a medium-high number of implemented practices. Ideally, they would like a significantly higher number of practices to be implemented. Mothers and teachers report of real and ideal practices were significantly associated. Teachers tend to report more practices than mothers. Teacher qualification was uniquely and positively associated with real partnership practices reported both by teachers and mothers. Teacher qualification was the only statistically significant predictor of ideal practices reported by teachers; mothers’ education predicted mothers’ report on ideal partnerships. Results point to the relevance of teacher qualification for better partnerships, particularly considering the variability of legal requirements regarding teacher qualification in infant classrooms across Europe.

Keywords

• teacher-family partnerships
• infant care
• teacher qualification
• partnership
• childcare