Abstract:

This paper aims to understand the voices of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) parents and practitioners’ as they communicate their views in a dialogue concerning matters pertaining to ECCE in the Eastern Cape. Scientific evidence attests to the importance of the early years for human potential to develop, and to support and promote optimal child development from conception. Lack of opportunities and interventions, or poor quality involvement with significant adults, during early childhood, can disadvantage young children, and diminish their potential for success. This requires a comprehensive approach to providing an environment, which offers early learning and interconnected relationships of nurturing and care. ECCE research wants to understand what constitutes positive outcomes of quality in young children’s lives. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, embraced an historic decision on a comprehensive, people-centred set of universal, and transformative goals and targets. The key tenet is to transform ECCE towards a more socially cohesive, and robust framework for building a stronger foundation of ECCE practices. By observing ECCE from a socio-cultural perspective, researchers may better ECCE, by illuminating how family, school, and communities intertwine, acknowledging the contexts of neighbourhoods influencing childhoods. The post-democratic government of South Africa, is committed to redesign its ECD policy and supporting legislation, to bridge the inequality gap and to facilitate access to quality ECCE services to young children across all provinces. The Eastern Cape Province is one of the largest rural provinces, where families have limited access to ECCE. Many young children are cared for, and reared by grandparents. Most families are from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and grandparents survive on state pensions, and often on care grants (child subsistence) from the state. Parents and grandparents, relegate the responsibility of ECCE solely to practitioners. Evidence suggests that parents are absent, impacting quality ECCE services, and young children’s holistic wellbeing. This study explored the voices of ECCE parents and practitioners’, to understand their connectivity and their perspectives on ECCE across the Eastern Cape. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory was adopted throughout this study. This theoretical framework purports that children’s development is significantly influenced and enhanced by interconnected relationships in various levels of environmental systems. Inter-relationships between home and school environments contribute towards optimising early developmental learning experiences. The theoretical framework was employed as a lens to view parent - practitioners communication and their perceived partnership in ECCE. The study adopted a qualitative approach to understand the perspectives through the lived experiences of parents and practitioners. Purposive sampling selected, sixty three parents and forty nine practitioners, in thirty seven ECD centres in rural and township contexts across the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, as research participants. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. A key finding of this study showed that further research was recommended to unpack parental engagement and collaborative practitioner-parental partnerships in ECCE.

Keywords:

ECCE, parents, practitioners, holistic wellbeing, children, involvement.