Supportive Family-Teacher Communication in Finnish ECEC: Looking at what works in Multicultural Partnerships : “A view from an Inclusive education perspective”
Lee, Samin; Sheikh, Sumera (2022)
Lee, Samin
Sheikh, Sumera
2022
Master's Programme in Teacher Education
Kasvatustieteiden ja kulttuurin tiedekunta - Faculty of Education and Culture
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-04-25
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202203312933
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202203312933
Tiivistelmä
Effective communication between families and teachers supports School-Family partnerships that benefit children’s development. The scope of strategies for maintaining ongoing communication should vary according to each families’ character, therefore, we utilized a variety of methods such as digital and oral forms of communication. This pilot case study set out to investigate and deepen our understanding of the supportive family-teacher online/offline communication practices and the nature of multicultural family-school partnerships in the Finnish early childhood education context. The central aim was to discover the flow and communicative organization of school-family partnerships including how families and teachers request and answer to each other. Considering the challenges of understanding the structure of partnerships, audio-recording of morning/afternoon transitions were analysed using conversation analysis, and text exchanges were studied using digital conversation analysis. A one-on-one interview with participants and weekly letters were also used as supporting evidence. The research was conducted in Helsinki with a total of two multicultural family-teacher partnership, Case 1 being a successful father-teacher partnership and Case 2 being a digital communication supporting school-family partnerships. The patterns of the conversation were revealed in Case 1: Jointly focusing on the institutional goals, Co-creating culturally sustainable practices, and Mutual understanding through repetition and in Case 2: Trust growing by trust and Ongoing exchange of information. In both cases, a pattern of welcoming and respectful interactions between the two spheres was revealed, and through successful school-family partnerships, inclusive ECEC environments were co-created and maintained to enrich children's learning experiences. Epstein's (2018) theory on two-way communication was revealed to be an important element in building and maintaining successful multicultural family-school partnerships. There were other common patterns used by the participants when the trouble sources occurred in ongoing interactions, with four significant factors (1) using alternative expressions (2) based on the amount of already shared knowledge (3) open-repair and (4) repetition. We conclude that common grounding knowledge built through practices between teacher-family may help to overcome linguistic and culturally derived differences. Despite the sampling limitation, this study’s findings represent a starting point for understanding the nature of multicultural family-school partnerships, and the current practices of communication in various ways.