Towards authentic family-school relationships: Engaging families through early years transition-to-school programs

Abstract

How early years transition-to-school programs have been used to engage families and foster family-school relationships is the focus of this study. Understanding how family-school relationships are created can inform future school engagement practices and ensure that all families are empowered to support their child’s educational outcomes. A review of literature suggests that families in low socio-economic and diverse communities are often perceived by schools as lacking interest or ability to play the role schools expect. Further, the cultural values, beliefs, and economic circumstances of these families are identified as affecting the ways they engage with schools, which may impact on the educational outcomes for children. A paucity of information was evident on how schools go about engaging families from different cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds. Early years programs have been shown to provide support for families as children transition to school, but how all families in a community can be engaged through such programs has not been clarified. An aim of the current study is to provide a rich description of how two Australian schools situated in diverse communities set about engaging all families in authentic relationships. A qualitative approach, using a multiple case study design, was used to examine how schools engaged parents through early years transition-to-school programs. Participants included school personnel and mothers of children who attended the programs – a playgroup and a pre-Prep program at one school, and a pre-Prep program at the other. Volunteer sampling was used to select parents for the study. Data were collected in focus group discussions and interviews, supplemented by researcher observations and publicly available school documents. Social capital theory provided a theoretical frame for the examination of findings and discussion. Findings suggest the cultural and linguistic diversity of the communities was not represented by the families who attended the early years programs. Both schools were seen to hold deficit perceptions in relation to community families and family resources. The purpose of engaging families in the transition-to-school period became one of addressing the inadequacies perceived in parents’ capacity and children’s development in terms of preparedness for school. As school leadership has an important influence on the development of family-school relationships, including more in-depth interviews with school leaders may have provided further insight. This research makes a useful contribution to the area. It provides a rich description of how schools in culturally and linguistically diverse communities go about engaging families in relationships and by framing thinking using social capital theory, shows how a school could shift deficit thinking to acknowledge the skills and resources families possess, and potentially engage all families. The study suggests that working in a collaborative manner with community stakeholders could enhance educational outcomes. Additionally, the adoption of a strengths-based approach is suggested as essential if schools are to develop authentic family-school relationships through early years transition-to-school programs.