The RESPECT Project : Lessons

Policy background

The Quality Improvement and Accreditation System requires a Centre to involve parents in its program as a pre-requisite for accreditation (NCAC, 1993). This requirement implies that staff and families are partners in children’s care and education - a view that is reinforced in Quality Area 2 (‘Partnerships with Families’) of the National Childcare Accreditation Council’s National Quality Assurance and Accreditation System (2006), which includes these principles:

• 2.1: Staff and families communicate effectively to exchange information about each child and the
• centre

Those requirements say, in effect, that parents’ opinions and ideas are equally significant in young children’s care and education as early childhood staff expertise. They compel early childhood staff to acknowledge parents’ ‘anecdotal’ knowledge … but there is no equivalent compulsion for parents to acknowledge staff’s ‘expert’ knowledge. In that respect, these requirements are anomalous, because the rest of the documents surrounding accreditation present a radically different picture of the teacher - one that also dominates many early childhood textbooks, journals, conferences and professional development sessions. This dominant picture of early childhood teachers highlights their expert knowledge (principally, developmental psychology) about children that they acquire through their education, training, professional development and experience. Such expert knowledge is presented as objective, systematic, derived from clear theories supported with research evidence and applicable to children in general (Smith 2003; Cannella, 1997; Dahlberg et al., 1999; Weedon, 1987). In contrast,  parents' knowledge is presented as anecdotal, subjective and applicable only to their specific child/ren. In this dominant picture, the parent is a nurturer to be taught the correct way to raise their children by experts, i.e. early childhood staff.

No surprise, then, that the participants in the RESPECT project reported that in their experience, parents and colleagues often regarded early childhood teachers as experts and saw parents as inexpert nurturers. Participants were concerned at this dichotomy and their concern is caught in all four Case Studies. Each Case Study presents a different response to the shared concern - teachers’ status as experts.

Lessons from the case study

The RESPECT project offers three lessons about ‘Teachers as experts’.

1. The expert-nurturer dichotomy dominates much of the education, training and regulation of early childhood educators; and many parents certainly regard early childhood staff as experts in their field. Nonetheless, many staff are deeply ambivalent about their status - sometimes to the point of denying their expertise and, therefore, denying the significance of their education, training and professional experience. As Jennifer put it:

Staff are not ‘experts’, no-one really is when it comes to children, as they are all unique and change everyday, but parents feel we are. Possibly their insecurities, but more education doesn’t mean ‘expert’.

2. In the face of parents’ expectations, staff ambivalence may cause continuing parental dissatisfaction that inevitably will colour their relationships with staff. Thus, staff who wish to improve their relationships with parents must reconcile themselves to being regarded as experts. Only then can they create new relationships with parents (and other stakeholders) that rest on something other than their professional expertise.

3. Staff ambivalence about their status makes it very hard to argue that qualified early childhood staff form a professional group which has its own ethics, knowledge-base and disciplinary framework and which should be awarded appropriate pay and conditions.

Participant actions and reflections

Jennifer found that parents did not participate in the program for a variety of reasons, not all of which concerned her expertise: ‘(P)arents are expected to know about the program and to want to be involved … (but) … staff should recognise that they (parents) are busy people and this needs to be respected.’ Having realised this, she felt less pressure to think-up new ways to encourage every parent to participation and decided instead to, ‘Listen to parents more and try to consider their cultural differences in raising their child.’

• A question for reflection: Should early childhood staff accept that some parents have good reasons for not wanting to be involved in their child/ren’s program at the Centre?

  If the answer is ‘Yes’                 
  How can staff reconcile this with the Accreditation-related requirements to involve (all) parents?

  If the answer is ‘No’                 
  How - if at all - can staff reconcile the Accreditation-related requirements to a) involve (all) parents in the program and b) communicate ‘effectively’ with parents who resist involvement?
  

Lena saw that staff can actively - albeit, perhaps unwitting - perpetuate the view that the staff are experts. Each time that staff ask parents for Background Information about their child’s family circumstances, they reaffirm their right and role as an expert to request it. (Of course, each time that a family refuses to comply with the request, they throw staff’s expert status into doubt.) Lena speculated on whether changing the Background Information form would challenge the idea that staff are experts: ‘Maybe we could use a blank page and each family could choose how and what to use it for? … Maybe we could ask parents something along the lines of ‘What do you want to share with us?’ ‘What do you think it is important for me to know (and) do you mind sharing this with me?’ While Lena’s suggestions would, of course, be a radical challenge to the notion of staff expertise that underpins so much of the Accreditation (and academic) literature, it would also, ironically, reinforce the assumption of equivalence/partnership between staff and parents that appears in the rest of that literature.

A question for reflection: Should early childhood staff allow parents to decide what - if any - background information about their children’s home circumstances to provide?

If the answer is ‘Yes’ 
How will parents know what information is relevant to their children’s  education?

Amber asked parents to state their dreams for their children in later life. She believed that their responses reinforced her concern that early childhood education is becoming obsessed with children’s educational outcomes at the expense of their social and emotional development. Thus, Amber’s ambivalence about ‘teachers as experts’ concerned not whether staff were or weren’t experts, but the nature of their expertise. She believed that staff were developing expertise as educationalists at the expense of their expertise in children’s social and emotional development: ‘Teachers are far more stressed - trying to impart knowledge, rather than relaxing enjoying being with the children and the children being with them. Thus, where is the nurture of the social/emotional child?’

A question for reflection: Can early childhood staff be experts in young children’s education as well as in their social and emotional development?

If the answer is ‘Yes’                 
Does current training and professional development equip early childhood staff with this range of expertise?

If the answer is ‘No’                 
Which area/s of expertise should they develop?