Early Childhood Development and Parental Involvement

The world, in this case, was amply represented, with 26 participants from 19 countries as far afield as India, Lithuania, Tanzania and China. All the course participants hold positions of responsibility in some aspect of the life of the baby and pre-school child. Some work directly in the field as principals of schools or kindergartens. Several participants are psychologists working in universities as lecturers and researchers, a few are pediatricians, some hold administrative positions in their country's Ministry of Education, or of Child Welfare and so on.

The challenge lay in planning a course that would benefit such a wide range of individuals; the bonus was the wide variety of countries and child-linked professions which were represented, and which ensured a rich repository of knowledge and experience about child rearing practices in many different cultures. At the same time, the participants had a thirst for knowledge and a keen desire to learn from the specialists who gave lectures and workshops, from the study visits that they made and from the books and articles at their disposal in the MCTC library.

Almost before the course had begun, the participants were paired off with partners from the other side of the globe and asked to draw up charts showing what their cultures had in common as regards caring for young children and what differences they found. In every case, whether it was India contrasted with Poland, Nigeria with the Philippines, or Vietnam with Cyprus, the similarities considerably outweighed the differences. Exploring the differences in parental involvement and attitudes - the points of disagreement about child rearing practices or burning issues in early emotional development - formed the starting point of the course - two days of lectures and discussions on this topic with Dr. David Oppenheim, an Israeli developmental psychologist from Haifa University. Not only did he supply his listeners with a clear overview of the latest research worldwide, but he also used Jewish culture, with its accumulated burden of persecution and loss, as an example of how child-rearing practices in any culture are influenced by the collective memory and experiences of a people.

One burning issue, which seemed to transcend geography and culture, was provision of child care services for the very young, and this issue was discussed in depth. It was regarded as an offshoot of the attachment relationship which is formed between the mother (or another significant carer) and the baby.

Dr. Sarah Rumney, an anthropologist and educator in charge of teacher training at the WIZO College of Art in Haifa, spoke to the group about theoretical aspects of family structure and relationships; Michal Finkelstein, a social worker concerned with families in cultural transition, stressed the special needs of parents in such situations.

Many sessions centered on how to involve parents in the early education of their children and, as a concomitant of this, much time and emphasis was placed on achieving effective communication between the parties. The participants learned about and practiced the Parent Effectiveness Training system developed in America in 1970 by Dr. Thomas Gordon, a system which aimed at providing better understanding of the parent-child relationship. For many of the participants this in itself proved to be a learning process.

Theory turned to practice when the group spent an afternoon in a kindergarten in the town of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. Here they were able to observe an activity which involved parents and their children and demonstrated the excellent communication between the kindergarten teacher and the parents of the children in her care.

Another morning was spent touring a kibbutz (collective agricultural village) near Haifa. The tour included several of the kibbutz institutions, including a baby house and a kindergarten where the participants were able to look around and interact with the children and staff.

As a group, the course participants did their own bonding and formed a cohesive social unit within MCTC. Several of the trainees, representing a cross-section of countries, educational backgrounds and work experience, agreed to be interviewed about their professional life and about the time they spent at MCTC.

Anh Tuyet, from Vietnam, trained as a teacher at the Pedagogic University of Hanoi and then for three years in Moscow. As supervisor of the Department of Early Childhood Education at the Ministry of Education, she has responsibility for 11 million children of pre-school age, only 2,700,000 of whom have creche or kindergarten places! Her aim is twofold: to set up ways of reaching parents of young children, using a Home Visitor network in remote areas, and to change the present style of Early Childhood Education in her region to something less structured and formal.

Carmen Alviar, from Manila in the Philippines, is involved in training programs for Early Childhood educators and particularly pre-school programs for children from disadvantaged families. With a first degree in Elementary Education, a second in Theology and Religious Education of young children, and a doctorate in Educational Management, this course, in the Holy Land, addressed a number of issues dear to her! On the concept of parental involvement she says that the way "to reach the heart of the parents is through the child," and she realizes that to make successful programs for low-income families she must involve the parents.

Jovita Petrulyte from Lithuania and Chan Yan Hui from China represented Eastern and Western pediatric medicine. Jovita's training and research programs are concerned with early intervention for development- disabled children. Learning effective methods of communicating with parents and helping them to share their feelings proved most helpful for her. Chan Yan Hui has a combined degree in pediatrics and clinical psychology. Among her responsibilities is teaching Parents' Groups comprised of those still pregnant up to parents of three-year-old children. Until now the tendency has been to lecture the parents in large group meetings, but the MCTC course has opened other possibilities to her, such as group work and role play, to help the parents communicate with one another.

Eva Keresztes, from Budapest in Hungary, approached the course from a quite different angle from those participants more directly involved in education. With an academic background in economics, international relations and law, she is employed by the Hungarian Ministry of Health and Welfare as Project Manager for a World Bank sponsored project to create a national tobacco and alcohol policy for Hungary, and publicize the link with cardio-vascular disease. Her team includes two physicians and a dietician and is currently preparing health education programs for primary school children and heart-healthy food labeling for the shops. Studying the ways in which parents can be helped to cooperate with teachers has given Eva some ideas about how to implement the health education programs that she plans. Her project aims to reach children between the ages of 6 and 13 before they use tobacco or alcohol, and to involve parents rather than teachers to advise other parents.

Giva Roselyn Dete began her professional life as SRN, midwife and psychiatric nurse in Zimbabwe. During an 11-year stay in the UK she gained two degrees, including an MA in Health Service Administration. Today she serves as acting under-secretary for Child Welfare at the Ministry of Health of Zimbabwe. Another participant from Zimbabwe, Angela Mutizira, is an ECE trainer at the Ministry of Education, so Giva has been able to get to know that side of the picture too. Giva's participation in the MCTC course has helped her see that her ministry needs a policy on Parental Involvement. Everything she heard on the topic of "attachment" has strengthened her belief that Zimbabwe women need a longer, or differently proportioned, maternity leave than the 45 days before birth/45 days after birth that are currently granted. Giva returns home with a project, formulated at MCTC, to implement workplace creches, especially in government buildings, hospitals, schools and industry, where there are many women workers.

Antounnetta Katsioloudi grew up in a Marronite village in northern Cyprus, the eldest of 12. After finishing teacher training college in Nicosia, she gained a scholarship to study Early Childhood Education for a BA degree at Newcastle University in the north of England. She took her second degree in Curriculum Development in the USA. Today she is in charge of curriculum development and in-service training for pre-school teachers at the Pedagogic Institute of Cyprus. The concept of parental involvement has not yet been implemented in Cyprus and Antounnetta was happy to see the implementation of the theories in the work done to involve parents of pre-schoolers in Israel. As a final project, she and her Cypriot colleague, Andreani Eracleus, a kindergarten teacher and supervisor at the Ministry of Education, are proposing that the Ministry of Education in Cyprus focuses on parental involvement, adapting its attitudes and expectations accordingly.

Another participant from the Mediterranean Basin was Alev Onder, an educational psychologist from Istanbul, Turkey, and one of the handful of men among the course participants. His university has a UNICEF- supported program, a multi-purpose center for early childhood education. Alev lectures to parents and was happy to gain experience in small-group work while participating in the MCTC course, where he felt that psychology held a central place. His final project centered around teacher-training for parental involvement, where he aims to give teachers the necessary communication skills to talk to the parents of the children in their care.

Twenty-six participants tackled the final projects with the same enthusiastic yet pragmatic approach as those few recounted above. Each one has, we hope, returned to her or his workplace ready and willing to work on developing parental involvement in Early Childhood Education in the way that most benefits the local milieu.