Shared responsibilities of parents and teachers in inclusive early childhood education
ENEducation of young children is a joint responsibility of parents, teachers and school community. For the effective implementation of inclusive education, in many countries educational policy emphasises the role and responsibility of parents, and treats them as integral partners in developing a more inclusive system, where the decision-making and the responsibility needs to be shared among educational partners. Parents play a vital role ensuring welfare and education of their young children and the pivotal part in shaping the identity and values. Because parents are familiar with the needs, problems, gifts, and abilities of their children, staff should involve parents as much as possible in the planning of the individual programmes, providing education, care, interventions and support to children. By building relationships with parents in their children‘s lives, teachers contribute to the creation of safe learning environments for children. In partnership, all partners share responsibilities, power and the decision making as well as mutual trust and respect. The term “partnership” captures the idea that responsibility for children is shared across all three contexts of home, school and community [21]. Thus, for many in Lithuania, building of this kind of relationship is part of a broader effort to strengthen school-family-community partnerships that support development and learning of young children, in particular, those with special educational needs. The authors of the research aimed at assessing the realised and expected early childhood education practices in inclusive pre-school settings with a particular focus on family-teacher cooperation. In the article, the part of the broader research, e.g., findings, which have been found via online questionnaire, is presented. The exploratory research was based on the concept of community of practice.The sample consists of 215 participants, including pre-school leaders, teachers, speech therapists, special pedagogues, psychologists. The results show that the family-teacher cooperation is expected to be strengthened in the following domains: assessment and educational processes of a child, relationship between parents and teachers, support for a family, collaboration with parents in a team. The main challenges of parent-teacher cooperation in inclusive pre-school education and intervention are related to: the lack of team work while identifying family preferences for the assessment of a child and identifying child’s strengths, preferences and interests to engage a child into active learning; the lack of professionals’ focus on a family support priorities and development of an individualised child and family support plan; difficulties in shared responsibilities and joint parent-teacher efforts in a team. The results show, that the identification of parents’ and teachers’ roles and responsibilities in a team is the most challenging issue in inclusive early childhood education practice.
