Parents’ perspective on a children’s learning

Abstract

Contemporary curricula of early childhood education were founded on perspective of playing learning child.  Although that approach leads to children’s well-being, research by Yahya (2006) has shown that parents do not want their children to learn through play, rather to focus on early and preschool education and teaching academic skills. If parents expect professionals to deliver the knowledge necessary for the development of academic skills to their children, research has been conducted on parental experience of a child’s learning. The aim of the research was to find out how parents understand their children's learning and approach to the contemporary concepts of child learning as well as children’s competence. The research was conducted in the period from November 2017 to May 2019. Parents involved in the study, documented how their children learn in a family environment, assessing their children’s competencies. Results show that parents see learning through everyday situations whereas learning was related to the academic mode (direct teaching of letters), has only appeared in one example. At the end of the research, parents participated in a group interview, discussing their expectations of the institution towards educating children. The results showed that parents expect the institution to encourage the development of a child's social knowledge and skills, while academic knowledge and skills are ranked lower.