Trainee teachers’ perceptions about parent partnerships: are parents partners?

Children’s life chances when their learning at home is supported collaboratively with early years’ and other educational settings. This original piece of research involved second year trainee teachers who were surveyed about their perceptions about parents and the nature of the partnership relationship. X (2007) previously explored early childhood teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning. Teachers act in accordance with their beliefs when their knowledge, understanding and confidence of that area is high. Using this assumption, this small scale study explores the student teachers perceptions about parents. To ensure rigour, the study was contextualised in the literature drawing on qualitative research methods including use of open-ended questions. The study considered the participants own experiences of families and parenting and were debriefed following their participation. Contextual Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to analyse the policy based data for this project. The initial findings suggest that the challenge for new teachers is their own confidence in their potential relationships with parents in relation to their feelings of being qualified but a novice. The four themes that emerged from the data provide a useful framework for the development of a questionnaire for the purpose of investigating this topic further. This is a timely paper, given the proposed changes in the White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere (2016), which will impact on the future training of teachers in England.