Looking into Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER) through the Evaluations of Preservice Early Childhood Teachers

Bildiri Konusu:Okul Öncesi Dönemde Anne-Baba Eğitimi

Looking into Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER) through the Evaluations of Preservice Early Childhood Teachers
The development of the child is shaped through the interaction between the layers of the ecological systems, where family has the place on micro level and the child’ development should be evaluated within this context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Now that families have a prominent role in lifelong experiences of children and advocating their needs especially during early years, engaging them in education fosters children’s overall developmental domains (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). So, the partnership between parents and teachers can let both of them to comprehend children’s needs and personalities (Reedy et al., 2010). Also, children’s academic and social skills can be boosted with the help of parent teacher partnership (Lang et al., 2016).

At this point where collaboration between parents and teachers are highlighted, some guidance improved by policy makers have a forefront impact on facilitating this partnership. One of these guidance is improved in Türkiye named as Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER) (MoNE, 2013). This manual includes a series of information about the importance of family education, the roles of the parents and exemplary activities developed in order to provide a guide for teachers to engage families in education.

Taking into consideration that the preservice early childhood teachers are the candidates of users of this guide, consulting for their critics and evaluations of OBADER can be a way for understanding their perceptions about whether they find it a useful tool to benefit from in their teaching practices because their perceptions or ideas will influence their behaviors in the classroom (Leathermen et al., 2005). Also reaching their views about what are the points need to be improved is essential for contributing the improvement of such programs. At that point answers for the following research questions will be pursued.

What are the evaluations of preservice early childhood teachers about sufficiency of OBADER for supporting families to get engaged in children’s education?

What are the suggestions of preservice early childhood teachers about improvement of OBADER for supporting families to get engaged in children’s education?

Methodology

In this research which has a qualitative design, 23 preservice early childhood teachers who are studying in a public university in Türkiye attended. The participants were selected with convenience sampling method (Fraenkel et al., 2012) from the fourth grade students who were taking Parent Involvement and Education Course. The participants was supplied a questionnaire related to OBADER and the answers has been analyzed with content based coding (Saldana, 2012) by using MAXQDA 2022 software program.

Findings

Even though the analysis of the findings are still being studied, on one hand, OBADER is found to be a useful resource for supporting and guiding teachers for how to engage families in education, it contributes for effective communication and this guide can enrich the professional development of teachers to be familiarized with parent engagement ways. On the other hand, preservice teachers have critics about how to enrich the content by reaching funds of knowledge of families and to turn the content within the framework of culturally responsive pedagogies.

Conclusion

This research may show that evaluation of OBADER by preservice teachers can both encourage them for strengthening the relationships with parents when they become teachers and it provides suggestions for the stakeholders about how to improve it.

References:

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by nature and Design. Harvard University Press.

Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E. & Hyun, H. H. (2012). How to design and evaluate research in education (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Lang S. N., Tolbert A. R., Schoppe-Sullivan S. J., Bonomi A. E. (2016). A cocaring framework for infants and toddlers: Applying a model of coparenting to parent–teacher relationships. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 34, 40–52.

Leatherman, J. M., & Niemeyer, J. A. (2005). Teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion: Factors influencing classroom practice. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 26, 23 36.

MoNE (2013). Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER). Ankara.

Reedy, C.K. & McGrath, W.H. (2010). Can you hear me now? Staff–parent communication in childcare centers, Early Child Development and Care, 180 (3) (2010), pp. 347-357.

Saldana, J. (2012). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Sage Publications Inc.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (2016). Policy Statement on Family Engagement: From the Earky Years to Early Grades.

Yılmaz-Bolat, E. (2017). Okul Öncesi Öğretmenlerinin OBADER Hakkındaki Görüşleri. International Periodical for the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic, 12(29), 603- 616.
Anahtar Kelimeler: OBADER, preservice teachers, early childhood education

Looking into Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER) through the Evaluations of Preservice Early Childhood Teachers
The development of the child is shaped through the interaction between the layers of the ecological systems, where family has the place on micro level and the child’ development should be evaluated within this context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Now that families have a prominent role in lifelong experiences of children and advocating their needs especially during early years, engaging them in education fosters children’s overall developmental domains (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). So, the partnership between parents and teachers can let both of them to comprehend children’s needs and personalities (Reedy et al., 2010). Also, children’s academic and social skills can be boosted with the help of parent teacher partnership (Lang et al., 2016).

At this point where collaboration between parents and teachers are highlighted, some guidance improved by policy makers have a forefront impact on facilitating this partnership. One of these guidance is improved in Türkiye named as Integrated Family Support Education Guide (OBADER) (MoNE, 2013). This manual includes a series of information about the importance of family education, the roles of the parents and exemplary activities developed in order to provide a guide for teachers to engage families in education.

Taking into consideration that the preservice early childhood teachers are the candidates of users of this guide, consulting for their critics and evaluations of OBADER can be a way for understanding their perceptions about whether they find it a useful tool to benefit from in their teaching practices because their perceptions or ideas will influence their behaviors in the classroom (Leathermen et al., 2005). Also reaching their views about what are the points need to be improved is essential for contributing the improvement of such programs. At that point answers for the following research questions will be pursued.

What are the evaluations of preservice early childhood teachers about sufficiency of OBADER for supporting families to get engaged in children’s education?

What are the suggestions of preservice early childhood teachers about improvement of OBADER for supporting families to get engaged in children’s education?