Abstract:

Education of young children is a joint responsibility of parents, teachers and school community. For the effective implementation of inclusive education, in many countries educational policy stress the role and responsibility of parents, and view them as integral partners in developing a more inclusive system, where decision-making and the responsibility needs to be shared; The vital role parents play in a welfare and education of their young children and the pivotal part in shaping identity and values. Because parents are familiar with the needs, problems, gifts, and abilities of their children, staff should involve parents as much as possible in planning of the individual programmes, providing education, care, interventions and support. By building relationships with parents in their children‘s lives, teachers contribute to the creation of safe and healthy learning environments for children. In a partnership, all partners share responsibilities, power and decision making, and mutual trust and respect. The term “partnership” captures the idea that responsibility for children is shared across all three contexts of home, school and community (McQuillan, & Coleman, 2007). Thus, for many in Lithuania, building this kind of relationship is part of a broader effort to strengthen school-family-community partnerships that support development and learning of young children, in particular, those with special educational needs. The authors of the research aimed at assessing the realised and expected early childhood education practices in inclusive pre-school settings with a particular focus on family-teacher cooperation. In the article, the part of the broader research is presented, e.g., a findings, which have been found via online questionnaire 'Recommended Practices in Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education' (2014). The exploratory research was based on the concept of community of practice. The sample consists of 215 participants, including pre-school leaders, teachers, speech therapists, special pedagogues, psychologists. The results showed that the family-teacher cooperation is expected to be strengthen in the following domains: assessment and educational processes of a child, relationship between parents and teachers, support for a family, collaboration with parents in a team. The main challenges of parent-teacher cooperation in an inclusive pre-school education and intervention are related to: lack of team work while identifying family preferences for the assessment of a child and identifying child’s strengths, preferences and interests to engage a child into active learning; lack of professionals’ understanding and priorities of support for a family; development of individualised child and family support plan; difficulties in shared responsibilities and joint parent-teacher efforts in a team. The results showed, that the identification of parents’ and teachers’ roles and responsibilities in a team is the most challenging issue in inclusive early childhood education practice.

Keywords:

Children with special educational needs, inclusive early childhood education, parent-teacher cooperation, shared responsibilities, community of practice.