Collaboration and communication between preschool teachers and parents of preschol children

The Thesis Collaboration and Communication between Preschool Teachers and Parents of Preschool Children consists of two parts: theoretical and empirical. In the first, theoretical part, we described the preschool education, activities carried out in the nursery schools and coordination between preschool education institution and parents. We continued with a description of the family's role in raising the child and the methods used for upbringing. We presented the basic types of families, the characteristics of the communication and communication between the educators and the parents. We focused on the collaboration between preschool teachers and parents of preschool children. Collaboration has many levels, principles, features and techniques, which we described by referring to a number of researchers. We categorized types of collaboration as either individual- or group-based, and then described each type of collaboration using categorization that considered formal and informal types of collaboration. In the empirical part of the Thesis we presented the results of research that we conducted using two different questionnaires. The aim of the survey was to determine the perception of parents and preschool teachers towards the collaboration between nursery school and parents. We also aimed to find out which forms of collaboration are most important for the parents and educators and which are the least important. We asked whether the estimate of importance of collaboration is affected by the level of education or age of parents. We examined whether professional staff with more work experience in the preschool education has more skills and knowledge in working with parents. Results showed that majority of participants considered collaboration between nursery school and parents as very important. Majority of parents chose office hours and every-day communication during dropoff and pick-up as the most important forms of collaboration. The active involvement of parents in the classes was the least favored. Most educators selected parent-teacher conference as most important communication form and message over the phone as least important. The latter was rated low because it was in the same group as e-mail communication, which represented an additional commitment and burden and which could be replaced by other forms of communication. Unexpected was the result that did not associate the years of working experience in the nursery school with the competence in working with parents. Instead, the competence of an individual is rather seen as a personal skill that a person possess or not. The results also show that there are few very young parents and on the other side of the spectrum there are only few older parents