2-211 - It Takes a Village: Exploring the Antecedents, Outcomes and Patterns of Family Engagement in ECE

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Young children need responsive, knowledgeable caregivers to flourish [National Academies of Science (NAS), 2015]. Interactions in families [parenting quality (Pinquart & Teubert, 2010) and parental involvement (Jeynes, 2012)], and interactions in early care and education (ECE) settings (NAS, 2015) have a significant impact on children’s current and future wellbeing. However, we know less about the exchanges between home and ECE settings and how family engagement patterns, or parent-teacher relationships, are associated with parenting and child functioning. These studies take a broad look at provider-parent partnerships, examining different conceptualizations of, influences on, and outcomes of, family engagement. The first paper explores characteristics of family support staff in early education programs (e.g., their education, experience, depression and stress) and associations with staff’s use of strength-based practices when interacting with parents. The second identifies different family engagement profiles in home-based and center-based Early Head Start programs and identifies how these engagement patterns are associated with changes in toddlers’ social emotional outcomes and receptive vocabulary, as well as parents’ parenting skills. The third investigates associations between dimensions of parent-teacher cocaring relationships in center-based programs and toddler’s social emotional adjustment, examining parent-child relationship quality as a mediator. The final paper explores how parent-teacher relationships and program-level family engagement strategies are associated with preschoolers’ social and behavioral functioning, after controlling for a number of parent, teacher, and program characteristics. Collectively, this set of findings provides information on both the importance of home-ECE interactions and how to strengthen home-ECE bonds for the benefit of families and children.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chairs

• Sarah Naomi Lang, Ohio State University

• Kyong-Ah Kwon, University of Oklahoma

Individual Presentations

• Family Support Staff: Examining their Approach to Supporting Families - Presenting Author: Iheoma U Iruka, HighScope Educational Research Foundation; Non-Presenting Author: Laura Kuhn, FPG, UNC-Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Noreen Yazejian, UNC Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute

• Profiles of Family Engagement in Early Head Start: Associations with Child Outcomes and Parenting Skills - Presenting Author: Shinyoung Jeon, University of Oklahoma-Tulsa; Non-Presenting Author: Kyong-Ah Kwon, University of Oklahoma; Non-Presenting Author: Shannon Guss, Early Childhood Education Institute (ECEI) at University of Oklahoma-Tulsa; Non-Presenting Author: Diane Horm, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa

• Direct and Indirect Associations between Cocaring, Parent-Child Relationships and Toddlers’ Social Emotional Adjustment - Presenting Author: Sarah Naomi Lang, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Lieny Jeon, Johns Hopkins University; Non-Presenting Author: Michael Benjamin Wells, Karolinska Institute

• Family-Teacher Relationships and Program Family Engagement: Associations with Preschoolers’ Social and Behavioral Outcomes - Presenting Author: Cynthia K Buettner, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah Naomi Lang, Ohio State University