Partnerships in multicultural ECEC settings in Norway: Perspectives from parents and professionals

Theoretical framework

The current paper uses the term partnership to denote a specific type of relationship between parents and professionals, in which two (or more) parts acknowledge each other as equals, with shared responsibility for the child’s development (Epstein, 2018). According to Epstein (2018), a partnership requires mutual trust, open communication, and a will to work closely together with the child in the centre. Epstein’s (2018) theory of overlapping spheres of influence draws on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory and emphasizes that children live their lives in multiple environments (e.g., home and ECEC); the overlap between these spheres is influenced by the experiences, philosophies, and practices of both parents and professionals and develops over time. According to Meads’ (1934) symbolic interactionism, children develop their values, beliefs, personalities, and self-concepts through interactions with their environments (i.e., home and ECEC). Thus, parents and professionals who do not familiarize themselves with the other environments in which the child develops may lack information to adequately interpret how expectations from these environments also influence the child. This may, in turn, result in a pivotal lack of keys to interpret the child’s development and behaviour and to be responsive toward the expectations the child meets in the other contexts. When the beliefs and values between the different spheres of influence in which the child navigates are greater, the interaction between the contexts may matter even more.

Epsteins’s (2018) theory of overlapping spheres of influence differentiates between two levels of interactions, namely, interactions between family and school, which comprise organizational practices aimed toward all families, and interactions between parents and teachers, which entail direct individual communication. However, these levels are also closely linked dependent on the amount and quality of interaction between parents and professionals. As meso-level processes are highly contextual (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), educational partnerships are likely to be influenced by exo-, macro-, and chrono-level factors, such as policies, culture, and ideologies in society. Thus, there is a need for contextualized knowledge about how parents and professionals view their partnerships and their beliefs about multicultural and multilingual education. The current study explores perspectives from parents and professionals from the Norwegian context and discusses their perspectives in relation to the Norwegian ECEC system and policies.

Norwegian ECEC context

A large expansion of the ECEC sector in Norway in past decades has resulted in universal access for children starting from the age of 1 through a statutory right that guarantees education availability for all children within their municipality (The Kindergarten Act, 2020). Attendance rates are high, with 97.1% of all 3- to 5-year-olds and 84.4% of all 1- to 2-year-olds attending ECEC (Statistics Norway, 2020). Among children of parents with an immigrant background, attendance rates are also relatively high, at 83.9% for children aged 1 to 5 (Statistics Norway, 2020). Like other Nordic countries, the Norwegian ECEC model has a holistic approach toward childhood, education and care (Greve & Solheim, 2010), with a strong emphasis on play as the foundation for learning (Karlsen & Lekhal, 2019).

In Norwegian ECEC centres, cooperating with families has formally been a requirement since the first Kindergarten Act (1975). Today, professionals’ responsibility to facilitate partnerships with all parents in their child group is regulated by The Kindergarten Act (2020) and the Norwegian framework plan for ECEC (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2017). The framework plan states that the kindergarten is responsible for facilitating cooperation and ensuring good dialogue with the parents and that parents and staff share responsibility for the child’s well-being and development. The staff in ECEC provisions in Norway comprises 40.7% ECEC teachers, who are required to have a 3-year bachelor’s degree to work with children from 0–5 years old, whereas 27.9% of the workforce holds a vocational degree to work with children in general (Statistics Norway, 2019). The rest of the staff do not hold any formal education to work with children (Statistics Norway, 2019). The staff-child ratio for children under 3 years old is 1:3, and 1:6 for children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old (The Kindergarten Act, 2020). One ECEC teacher can be responsible for up to seven children under the age of 3 and 14 children between the ages of 3 and 6 (The Kindergarten Act, 2020). Within the ECEC-teacher education program, working with families is stated as one of the competencies that students shall develop through the program and is specifically addressed through several courses (Forskrift om rammeplan for barnehagelærerutdanning, 2012).

Parent-professional partnerships in Norwegian ECEC

As parental involvement and open communication between parents and professionals is a clear aim in Norwegian ECEC (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2017), several practices are applied to facilitate partnerships. The partnership practices in Norwegian ECEC comprise practices at an individual level as well as at a group level and mainly include daily communication in the mornings and evenings (see, e.g., Drugli & Undheim, 2012), phone calls, communication through digital platforms, parent-teacher conferences, parent meetings, parent councils, and more informal gatherings (Glaser, 2014; Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2018).

Although annual parental surveys convey general satisfaction with Norwegian ECEC among parents (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2021), research on how parents and professionals experience their relationships within the Norwegian context has been scarce (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2018; Wolf, 2019). The little research that has been done so far suggests that most parents and professionals are satisfied with communication but that they still consider there is room for improving the exchange of information about the child’s experiences both at home and in ECEC (Drugli & Undheim, 2012; Sønsthagen, 2020). Newly educated teachers report experiencing general self-efficacy in their work with parents and emphasize that they have been prepared to work with parents through their ECEC-teacher program (Bjerkestrand et al., 2017). However, in situations where the child appears to have problems in ECEC or at home or where parents are dissatisfied with their work, professionals report being challenged (Bjerkestrand et al., 2017).

Some studies indicate that partnerships between parents and professionals in ECEC are related to parents’ educational, social, and cultural backgrounds (Rognan, 2004; Wolf, 2019). As Norwegian ECEC traditions largely draw upon values and beliefs of middle-class culture (Stefansen & Skogen, 2010), Wolf (2019) suggests that professionals may limit contact with parents who differ from themselves to avoid conflict and maintain harmony, leading to unequal access to attention and warmth from professionals. Parents with immigrant backgrounds have further expressed concern for how professionals follow up norms from their home culture (Djuve & Pettersen, 1998). With different cultural and linguistic backgrounds than many ECEC professionals, parents with immigrant backgrounds may differ from professionals in their beliefs about educational aspects that are relevant for their children, such as multiculturalism and multilingualism. In a small-scale qualitative study of parents’ and professionals’ views on multilingualism in ECEC, findings suggest that parents and professionals may experience and view multilingual practices quite differently, which in turn may relate to their partnerships, as language and culture are a part of the power structures in their relationship (Pesch, 2018). To our knowledge, no previous studies have specifically investigated how parents and professionals view their partnerships in multicultural ECEC provisions in Norway and the extent to which they share beliefs on multicultural and multilingual education.

As 22% of all children in Norwegian ECEC have immigrant backgrounds (Statistics Norway, 2021), facilitating partnerships with parents of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can be seen as a facet of professionalism for professionals working in ECEC and may be pivotal to ensure that all children and their families have equal access to high-quality early education (Wolf, 2018). Furthermore, the current globalized context in which children grow up today requires multicultural competence for all children. Hence, the framework plan establishes that cultural and linguistic diversity should be used as a resource in pedagogical work in ECEC to facilitate reflection on similarities and differences between cultures (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2017). Based on the previously summarized literature, we believe that Norwegian ECEC constitutes an ideal setting to study partnerships in the provision of ECEC in multicultural settings for three reasons: (1) Norway provides universal access to ECEC, with a high level of outreach to immigrant groups; (2) creating partnerships with all parents is an important part of both the curriculum and teacher education program; (3) Norwegian ECECs are required by the curriculum to promote cultural and linguistic diversity and mutual respect (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2017).

Research question

The purpose of this study is to provide contextualized knowledge about the views of parents and professionals on their mutual partnerships and their beliefs about multicultural and multilingual education in ethnically and culturally diverse ECEC settings in Norway. To approach this, the present study is guided by the following research question:

How do parents with immigrant backgrounds and professionals working in ethnically and culturally diverse ECEC provisions (1) view their partnerships, and (2) what are their beliefs about multicultural and multilingual education?

Sample and procedure

For the present study, we used data from the collaborative European research project Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society (ISOTIS). Funded by the European Union,³ the ISOTIS project aimed to combat educational inequalities and increase inclusiveness. The data from parents and professionals in Norway were collected in 2018.

Data from the parents were collected through a face-to-face interview using a questionnaire (Broekhuizen et al., 2018). In the present study, we specifically selected the parents of children aged 3 to 6 years old with a Turkish immigrant background living in Norway (n = 32),⁴ mainly in Oslo, Drammen and Trondheim (Broekhuizen et al., 2018). Parents with a Turkish immigrant background were sampled for the ISOTIS structured interview study in multiple countries (Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and England) because they constitute the largest single-origin immigrant population in Europe (Huschek et al., 2012). In Norway, Turkish immigrants represent one of the first immigrant groups from a non-Western country, and on average, this group has low levels of educational attainment, employment and income (Henriksen, 2007). While second-generation Turkish immigrants have higher participation rates in higher education than first-generation immigrants, they still have lower participation rates than those of average non-Western immigrants in Norway (Henriksen, 2007). Thus, providing insights into Turkish immigrant parents’ experiences with early education can be useful to develop inclusive educational practices. Parents were interviewed in the language of their choice (i.e., Turkish or Norwegian) by trained interviewers who had a Turkish immigrant background themselves. The interviews were conducted in locations where the parents could speak freely and lasted for approximately one hour. Parents were given a gift card worth 100 NOK as a small incentive to participate. The mean age was 34 years, and 96.9% of participants were female. The majority of the parents had attained a high school or vocational program level of education (59.4%), almost a third of the parents had attained higher education (28.1%), and some parents had attained a primary or secondary school level of education (12.5%). A total of 78.9% of the participating parents were first-generation immigrants, whereas 28.1% of the parents were second-generation immigrants.

Data from the professionals (n = 56; 24 teachers and 32 managers) were collected through an internet survey. This survey targeted professionals working in formal and informal education in European countries (Slot et al., 2018). For the purpose of the current study, we used the data provided by professionals recruited from the same areas as the parents. However, although the data are collected from parents and professionals from the same areas, the data are not clustered at the centre level. The professionals selected for the present study worked in ECEC provision in which 25% or more of the children had an ethnic-cultural background other than Norwegian.⁵ The majority of the teachers (85.7%) had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, whereas all managers (100%) had a bachelor’s degree or higher. All but one of the professionals were born in Norway and reported Norwegian as their home language and none had parents born in non-Western countries.

Table 1. Description of the parents’ and professionals’ background characteristics.

Measures

To investigate the views of parents and professionals in multicultural ECEC provision on their partnerships, we measured the parents’ perceived discrimination by the teacher, both parents’ and teachers’ partnership views, and the beliefs about multicultural and multilingual education of parents, teachers and managers. The items used were translated from English to Turkish and Norwegian by researchers involved in the ISOTIS project. This translation was double-checked by native speakers in Norwegian and Turkish who were external to the project. The data were collected in different languages (i.e., Turkish or Norwegian), and all items reported in this paper have been translated back to English by the authors.

Perceived discrimination

The absence of perceived discrimination among parents is a prerequisite for a partnership between parents with immigrant backgrounds and professionals in ECEC. Parents were asked to report how often they felt discriminated against or unfairly treated because of their ethnic-cultural background by the teachers in the ECEC centre of their child, as well as how often they thought their child had felt discriminated against or unfairly treated because of their ethnic-cultural background by the teacher. Parents were asked to respond to these two items on a 4-point Likert scale, with never (1), rarely (2), sometimes (3) and often (4) as the possible response options.

Partnerships

Partnerships were assessed using two scales specifically developed for the parent structured interview study (Broekhuizen et al., 2018) and the internet survey of professionals working in formal and informal education in 10 European countries (Slot et al., 2018), inspired by the Parent-Teacher Relationship Scale (Petrogiannis & Penderi, 2013). For the purpose of the present study, a subset of items was selected, resulting in two sets of corresponding items for the group of parents and teachers. These items revolve around understanding each other and sharing beliefs about the child’s behaviour and about what the child can achieve, as well as their perception of problem-oriented contact between parents and teachers. Additionally, parents were asked to report whether they trust the way their child’s teachers work with the children. As trust is valued as a key ingredient in partnerships (Epstein, 2013), we included this item from the parental survey in our analysis, although there was no corresponding item in the teachers’ survey. For all partnership items, both parents and teachers were asked to respond on a 5-point Likert scale with the following possible responses: disagree (1), slightly disagree (2), undecided (3), slightly agree (4), and agree (5). As managers often do not work directly with families in the same way as teachers, they were not asked to answer the statements regarding partnerships.

Multicultural beliefs

To assess multicultural beliefs, parents and professionals were asked to respond to four different statements about multicultural education, adapted for the parent structured interview study (Broekhuizen et al., 2018) and the internet survey of professionals working in formal and informal education in 10 European countries (Slot et al., 2018) from the Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale (Hachfeld et al., 2011). Statements concern sensitivity toward differences between children from different cultures, seeing similarities between children from different cultures and learning to respect other cultures as early as possible. Both parents and professionals were asked to respond to the statements on a 5-point Likert scale with the following possible response options: disagree (1), slightly disagree (2), undecided (3), slightly agree (4), and agree (5).

Multilingual beliefs

Parents and professionals were asked to respond to four common statements regarding multilingual beliefs, adapted for the parent structured interview study (Broekhuizen et al., 2018) and the internet survey of professionals working in formal and informal education in 10 European countries (Slot et al., 2018) from the Monolingual Beliefs in Education Scale (Pulinx et al., 2017). Items included concern about the support multilingual children should receive for their home language in ECEC, whether children should be allowed to use their home language in ECEC, and whether using their home language in ECEC will result in less sufficient development of their Norwegian language skills. Parents and professionals were asked to respond to the statements on a 5-point Likert scale with the following possible response options: disagree (1), slightly disagree (2), undecided (3), slightly agree (4), and agree (5).

Analysis

To investigate parents’ and professionals’ views on their partnerships and their beliefs about multicultural and multilingual education, descriptive analyses were conducted, including medians, means, and standard deviations for all items for parents, teachers, and managers. To investigate whether there were differences between parents and professionals in partnership views and multicultural and multilingual education, we conducted independent sample Kruskal-Wallis tests. Kruskal-Wallis was chosen over t-tests and ANOVA due to the measurement level of our data, which is at an ordinal level. All analyses were conducted in the statistical package IBM SPSS Statistics 26 for Windows.

Ethical considerations

Both the structured parent interview study (Broekhuizen et al., 2018) and the survey with professionals (Slot et al., 2018) received ethical approval from the Ethical Advisory Committee of Utrecht University. Both the European General Data Protection Regulation (Reg. EU 2016/679), relevant Norwegian legal and ethical requirements, and the standards described in the ISOTIS data management plan were fully met and respected. All participants gave informed consent in accordance with the demands of the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Participants had the option to withdraw from the study at any time. The data were collected through the survey software LimeSurvey for both parents and professionals and stored at a protected central data server at Utrech University (Broekhuizen et al., 2018; Slot et al., 2018).

Strengths and limitations

The present study has several limitations that need to be taken into account when interpreting the findings. First, the sample sizes are small and nonclustered, and the sample of parents is limited to parents with Turkish immigrant backgrounds. However, as recruiting participants with immigrant backgrounds for research often proves to be a challenging task (Lopez-Class et al., 2016), the present study provides unique insight into the perspectives of parents with immigrant background experiences and provides new knowledge on a topic that has not previously been investigated in the Norwegian context. As Turkish immigrants in Norway, on average, have low levels of educational attainment, employment and income (Henriksen, 2007), knowledge about their experiences with early education may be useful to develop inclusive educational practices. Second, the self-reported nature of our data may be sensitive to social desirability bias. However, the substantial variation found in most of the variables supports the validity of our data. Next, the partnership items presented in the present study are not exhaustive. These items do not account for all aspects of a partnership, and it is therefore worth noting that parents could still be experiencing other barriers in their relationships that are not assessed in the present study. One such aspect that the present study does not cover fully is the power structures between parents and professionals, which would be important for future research to further investigate, as partnerships require two (or more) parts who acknowledge each other as equal and who share the responsibility for the child’s development (Epstein, 2018). Last, a significant strength of the present study is the inclusion of perspectives from both parents and professionals. Previous literature has largely focused on the parents’ perspectives (Norheim & Moser, 2020), but to understand relationships within a meso-system, it is important to gain insight into the perspectives from both sides and to see these in relation to contextual factors.

Helga Norheim

is an associate professor at Oslo Metropolitan University at the Department of Early Childhood Education. She is a trained Early Childhood Education and Care teacher, with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education and Care from Oslo and Akershus University College of applied Sciences (now Oslomet) and a PhD in Educational Science from the University of South-Eastern Norway. Before she started here PhD, she gained experience as a research assistant, ECEC professional and ECEC center leader.

Thomas Moser

is a full professor of kindergarten research at the National Center for Learning Environment and Behavioral Research at the University of Stavanger. His current research interests focus on kindergartens’ quality and effects, especially regarding bullying, inclusion and children’s social development, well-being and learning. Furthermore, he has dealt with topics such as body and learning, space and materiality as well as curriculum issues and professional development.

Martine Broekhuizen

defended here dissertation in 2015 in which she investigated individual and contextual differences to the effects of early child care quality on children’s socio-emotional development. More in general, here research interests include ECEC quality, child temperament and socio-emotional development, educational partnerships in the early years, and inclusive (early) education.