By Jane Drake, a partnership advisory teacher in Leeds and author of Planning Children's Play and Learning in the Foundation Stage and Organising Play in the Early Years (David Fulton)
Parents are 'children's first and most enduring educators' (Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, QCA 2000), making partnership with parents and carers essential if early years practitioners are to plan effectively for a child's learning.
A genuine commitment to work co-operatively with parents should be a feature of any high-quality setting and should impact on every aspect of practice.
As practitioners, we build up expertise in how young children learn and how each child operates within our setting. But it is the parent who knows their child best, and unless there is a sharing of information between practitioners and parents, a child's learning needs will be neither fully understood nor, ultimately, met.
Sharing information about the child
Opportunities for talking to parents about their child's learning may happen informally, and spontaneous exchanges can generate useful information.
If practitioners manage their time effectively, they can schedule such discussions, for example, at dropping-off and picking-up times, so allowing a culture of informal information sharing to develop.
A trusting and warm relationship between key worker and parents begins with the initial contact meeting, and it is crucial that, from the start, parents understand that staff value their knowledge and understanding of their child.
However, it may not always be possible for practitioners to speak to parents on a day-to-day basis about their child's learning milestones, current interests or recent experiences. Parents' working hours may prevent them from having daily or even regular contact of any kind with the nursery, and a two-way diary can be useful where contact time between practitioner and parent is limited.
In some instances, it may be the key worker who is unavailable to talk to the parent, perhaps because of other professional commitments. In such cases, practitioners should make it clear to the parent that they will arrange a convenient slot to discuss the child's progress.
Practitioners should try to engage both parents where possible and make sure that their setting is a place where both male and female carers feel comfortable. Where there is a true commitment to parent partnership, teams will be creative in their time management to ensure that they reach all the parents.
Parent and key worker meetings
Early years settings tend to organise parent and key worker meetings on a regular basis and in a more structured way. Again, the timing of these meetings will depend on the parents' daily routines and commitments, and the staff team will have to be flexible when arranging them.
These meetings offer an opportunity for the practitioner and parents to share their observations and to consider the implications of these in terms of planning for the child's learning. They should be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect and practitioners should act as genuine listeners, responding to what they hear from the parent and not allowing discussions to be driven by a pre-set agenda based on what has been observed in the nursery. There should be an emphasis on celebrating what the child has achieved and on looking for ways of building on their current interests and achievements.
Key worker meetings usually take place in the nursery, but where parents prefer and staffing allows, they may be planned to take place in the home environment. Home-based meetings can offer a more relaxed context for the parent but will not necessarily be the choice of all.
Pre-arranged meetings give both parties time to prepare and think about issues that they want to discuss. An up-to-date development profile can provide a useful focus for discussion, particularly if that profile includes contributions from home. A series of photographs, or a video sequence, can also be very informative in such meetings.
Lending parents a camera or video camera ahead of the meeting can help provide an equal partnership and a balance of information from home and setting.
Children's learning documented through photography can give a deep insight into what is motivating them and provide useful information about their stage of development. Video has the added advantage of recording speech and movement and can be played again and again in order to revisit interesting observations.
During individual meetings with parents, time should be set aside for looking at the implications of observations from home and nursery. Planning together for children's learning should result in a more holistic approach, an enhanced curriculum and continuity for the children.
There will be opportunities to look at the child's learning journeys and to talk about appropriate provision and support for the child's developmental stage.
Where a pattern of behaviour or personal learning interest has been identified, the key worker and parent can discuss experiences that could be offered at home and in the nursery in the hope that they would engage the child and further extend learning.
For example, if both parent and key worker have noticed that the child often gathers objects in bags and transports them around the home and nursery, they could agree to provide a collection of bags and everyday objects at home and similar resources in nursery.
They could also arrange for the nursery to provide buckets, stones and shells in the outdoor area and for the child's father to take a bucket on walks to the park so that the child can collect and transport conkers, twigs and leaves.
Alternatively, the key worker and parent may decide to make a change in family circumstances the focus for planning. Perhaps relatives are coming to stay for some time and the mother is planning to involve the child in preparing a room and food for their guests. In response, the practitioner could provide additional resources in the nursery home corner and make time to discuss and 'play out' the experience with the child.
Summative reports offer parents a written summary of the child's learning and are usually organised under the six areas of learning. These should be discussed with the parents and their contributions incorporated in a section provided on the format.
Sharing information about the curriculum
In a high-quality setting, practitioners will share with parents information about the Foundation Stage curriculum and about young children as learners, as opportunities arise. However, group parents meetings are an excellent way to:
* explain how the setting plans and assesses a child's learning within the six areas of learning
* discuss the importance of the learning process
* highlight high-quality learning experiences with no concrete outcome
* emphasise the importance of child-initiated learning
* talk about schemas
* discuss appropriate expectations and contexts for learning.
Practitioners should be on hand to answer questions, although it would generally be inappropriate to discuss a specific child's learning in such meetings.
It is also worth pointing out that practitioners should only lead such meetings if they have confidence in their presentation skills and their underpinning knowledge of child development and early learning. Less experienced members of staff could, however, support a more experienced one in delivering a presentation and managing discussions.
Be responsive to the needs of individuals and the community when arranging the timing of such meetings. For working parents, a late afternoon or evening time slot will probably be the most convenient, but other parents may prefer to attend during the day.
Video observations and photographs shown on a large screen are a good way to illustrate talks and to make the link between principles and practice, but ask parents' permission to use these images with a wider audience.
Study group meetings Settings could follow up these group meetings with smaller study group meetings, in which practitioners use video observations as a means to analyse a child's learning in depth. Again, the issue of confidentiality should be addressed and anxieties handled sensitively. Once a group of parents are familiar and comfortable with each other, they are likely to feel more relaxed about contributing to discussions.
Workshops
Workshops with parents and children working together in the setting can be an effective, informal and hands-on way to reinforce messages given at group and individual meetings and focus on an area of learning or provision.
When organising such workshops:
* plan and prepare for them carefully
* provide resources such as question cards to prompt parents who may feel unsure about what will be expected of them. For example, post up a card in the construction area saying, 'Can you work together to make a garage big enough for this car?'
* send parents letters explaining what will happen in the workshop
* provide handouts about children's learning for parents to take away and reflect upon
* allow enough time to talk to parents about the children's play and learning.
Digital photographs
Practitioners should aim to provide parents with daily digital photographs offering evidence of their child's learning, as such a system is easy to organise once the equipment is available and software installed.
Replaying the images on a 'loop' or slide show on the computer screen at the end of each day or session will also be popular with both children and adults. The photographs will enable the children to revisit their experiences during the day and to share these with parents.
Practitioners could provide photographs that focus on an area of learning or provision, a key group of children or a particular learning story. Or, they could provide a random selection illustrating the breadth of learning experiences observed that day in both indoor and outdoor provision. Again, this can be an effective way of celebrating learning that has no tangible outcome.
A brief written explanation or statement accompanying the images may be helpful - for example, 'Look at all the different writing experiences your children have had around nursery today' or 'Look what we have been finding out in the water area today'.
Display
Display, such as a permanent board designated for parents' information, can be an effective way of sharing up-to-date news about events in the nursery and the community. Copies of nursery newsletters and guidance leaflets could be made available there. Other displays celebrating children's work around the nursery should be annotated to make clear to parents the significance of their children's play and learning.
Further reading
* Whalley, Margy and the Pen Green Centre Team, Working with Parents (Hodder Headline)
* Working with Parents: A Shared Understanding of the Curriculum 3-5, written for the Scottish curriculum but with principles relevant to all settings. www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyyears/resources
CASE STUDIES
Childminders Sarah and Alan Beningfield, March
'It's all about good communication,' says Cambridgeshire childminder Sarah Beningfield, reflecting on working in partnership with parents.
Sarah, whose qualifications include the NNEB (now DCE), has been a childminder for four years and was last year joined in the 'family business' by her husband, Alan. Together they look after 14 children, including three of their own.
When she takes on a child, she issues the family with a disposable camera with which to photograph the child's family members and home. The photographs are then used as the starting point for the child's profile.
A daily chat with parents and a two-way diary, including Sarah's observations, provide up-to-the-minute information about a child. Both she and the parents also regularly use photographs as a means of exchanging information about a child's interests and learning, and parents are encouraged to bring in examples of their children's 'work' from home.
The children's profiles, containing observations, photographs and examples of the children's work, are available to parents all the time. Sarah also uses displays to provide evidence of their learning and talks to parents about the learning recorded in the children's 'tracker books', which are divided by area of learning and cross-reference the learning outlined in the profiles.
She plans to schedule more regular parent meetings and newsletters about the curriculum in an attempt to reinforce messages about children's early education.
'The parents like what we do because we encourage the children to be independent learners, but I don't think they always connect that to the educational benefits,' she says.
NE Lincolnshire Childminding Network
Meanwhile, childminders in Lincolnshire are taking part in a DfES-funded pilot looking at how ICT will help them and other early years settings rise to the challenge of working in partnership with parents.
The North East Lincolnshire Childminding Network is one of ten local 'settings' to be involved in the project, which was initially rolled out to five childminders.
Under the scheme, the childminders were given a digital camera and Digital Blue (movie maker) and worked with an ICT consultant to create a 'virtual learning environment' for each child. Parents can access their child's records via the Lighthouse for Education portal and the Network's internet site, using a protected password. Network co-ordinator Helen Weston says, 'The reaction from parents and the support that they have given the scheme have been overwhelming.'
Teresa Sutherland, a childminder for the past four years and looking after 15 children including two of her own, has embraced the scheme. Her policies and procedures, newsletters, curriculum planning and two-way diary with parents are all now available via the internet along with the individual child's learning journey, 'brought to life' by images. Video clips and photographs of, for example, a minibeast hunt, a day trip or a puppet show can all be uploaded by the end of the day, while longer-term projects, such as growing sunflowers, can be tracked using 'Create a Story' software.
Teresa, whose qualifications include an NVQ3 in childcare and education, finds she can record the information faster than before. It is also more detailed, providing her with a clearer idea of what to plan next and giving parents a real insight into the breadth of learning that occurs.
'The parents see so much more of what the children are doing and what they're learning. One parent said, "It's like being in the room myself".'
Series guide
* This 12-part series aims to support practitioners in achieving and maintaining high-quality provision in the Foundation Stage.
* The series is underpinned by the principles for early years education as identified in Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage and takes into account the national daycare standards and the 'outcomes' for children as set out in Every Child Matters and laid down in the Children Act 2004.
* Each part of the series will focus on a different aspect of practice, highlight key elements of good practice and offer a benchmark for self-evaluation.
* The series encourages practitioners to be reflective in their practice and to see the quest for quality as a developmental process.
* The elements of quality in early years practice are often interdependent and there will be points of cross-referencing between parts of the series.
WORKING WITH PARENTS TO SUPPORT CHILDREN'S LEARNING
10 steps to quality
1 How do you ensure that a trusting, respectful relationship develops from the initial contact with parents and that the nursery environment is warm and welcoming to all parents and carers entering the setting?
2 How do you plan for flexibility to enable you to reach all parents, taking into account individual circumstances?
3 Do you understand and are you responsive to the cultures within your community when planning work with parents?
4 Are you able to offer the services of an interpreter where the parent's home language is not English?
5 What media do you use to enable you to reflect with a parent on their child's learning?Could you introduce other media to provide information?
6 How do you support parents in gathering observational information about their child at home?
7 How do you share your expertise within the Foundation Stage and knowledge of young children as learners with parents? Do you produce any written material (for example, leaflets and handouts) to guide parents in supporting their child's learning?
8 How is your fundamental commitment to partnership with parents reflected through your daily practice and the nursery environment?
9 How are parents encouraged to become involved in their child's play and learning in the nursery?
10 How do managers and leading practitioners support less experienced or confident staff in sharing information with parents?
