Collaboration Between Child Care and Parents: Dilemmas and Contradictory Condititions in the Institutional Arrangement o
In Denmark, as in many other countries, children live their lives across different contexts, primarily in the home and in childcare institutions. The child’s contexts are simultaneously both separated and related. On the one hand, the family and childcare
- PDF / 227,256 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 35 Downloads / 181 Views
Collaboration Between Child Care and Parents: Dilemmas and Contradictory Condititions in the Institutional Arrangement of Child Care Maja Røn Larsen
Abstract In Denmark, as in many other countries, children live their lives across different contexts, primarily in the home and in childcare institutions. The child’s contexts are simultaneously both separated and related. On the one hand, the family and childcare are not automatically involved in each other’s arrangements, but on the other hand, they are structurally connected and continuously interacting due to the crossover of the children’s activities. Therefore, collaboration and coordination between parents and professionals is an important part of childcare practice. Based on comprehensive empirical work in different Danish childcare centres, this chapter discusses how parental collaboration in the pedagogical practice is often a rather paradoxical effort, developed in relation to contradictory historical and institutional conditions and requirements to treat parents both as equal participants, consumers and clients. In this way, challenges and dilemmas in parental collaboration in childcare are analysed in relation to larger societal conflicts about the relation between society and citizen and the overall purpose of childcare as state institutions.
Introduction The Nordic countries have a long tradition of young children spending part of their lives in out-of-home care practices, and almost all children aged 1–6 attend childcare on a daily basis (e.g. Haagensen 2011). This is a trend that is also developing in many other OECD countries (Dalli et al. 2011; OECD 2001; Reedy and McGrath 2008; Sphancer 2002). In this way, an increasing number of children live their lives in settings inhabited by other children and different adults – parents and professionals. These different settings are separately organised, but at the same time, they are related through the children’s trajectories of participation. Different research perspectives have shown how children’s learning and development processes extend M.R. Larsen (*) Department of Psychology and Education, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 C. Ringsmose, G. Kragh-Müller (eds.), Nordic Social Pedagogical Approach to Early Years, International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development 15, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42557-3_13
219
220
M.R. Larsen
across the division between home and childcare – what occurs in one context is significant for what occurs in another (e.g. Andenæs and Haavind 2015; Dencik 2004; Fleer and Hedegaard 2010; Kousholt 2006, 2008; Sommer et al. 2013). This corresponds with a Danish social pedagogical tradition of focusing on the collaborative processes between parents and pedagogues, who have common and related, but also different, tasks in relation to supporting the children’s possibilities for wellbeing, learning and development (e.g. Andenæs 2011; Andenæs and Haavind 2015; Højholt et al. 2014; Kousholt 2
Data Loading...
