ABSTRACT

Effective school-parent partnerships are in the child’s best interests. Nevertheless, the complexity of the parent-teacher relationship requires the teachers to be trained in parent communication skills. Here, we explore factors that affect the parent-teacher relationship from the perspective of education trainees, who were required to communicate with parents to help children with difficulties with their social skills. In this qualitative research, we used thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with four trainee kindergarten teachers, three kindergarten teacher trainers, and three parents, all involved in such communication processes. Our findings reveal that many teachers minimized parent-teacher communication to avoid potential conflict with parents, and this was mimicked by trainees. However, more experienced kindergarten teachers, confident in their skills and in the respect of parents, were open-minded about communications between trainee teachers and parents, mediated these communications, and found them useful. The findings support the idea mentioned in other literature that training of teachers in future should focus on supervised practice of parent-teacher communication skills to promote a ‘sharing dialogue’.

摘要

有效的学校-家长伙伴关系符合孩子的最大利益。然而，家长与教师关系的复杂性要求教师接受家长沟通技巧方面的培训。在这里，我们从教育学员的角度探讨影响家长与教师关系的因素，他们需要与家长沟通，以帮助有困难的孩子提高社交技能。在这项定性研究中，我们对四名实习幼儿园教师、三名幼儿园教师培训师和三名家长进行了半结构化访谈的主题分析，他们都参与了此类沟通过程。我们的调查结果显示，许多教师尽量减少家长与教师的沟通，以避免与家长发生潜在的冲突，这被学员模仿。然而，更有经验的幼儿园老师，对自己的技能和家长的尊重充满信心，对实习教师和家长之间的沟通持开放态度，调解这些沟通，并发现它们很有用。调查结果支持其他文献中提到的观点，即未来的教师培训应侧重于家长与教师沟通技巧的监督实践，以促进“共享对话”。