Family education in day nurseries.

How teachers' tacit and explicit knowledge

helps develop parents' empowerment.

 

Francesca Gasparini

 

 

As an educational environment, childcare services everyday work on the relationship with families, assuming it as central mean to promote active participation by supporting, collaborating, and being partner with parents (Mantovani, 2006; Milani, 2010). Investigations concerning services for children emphasize that these services carry out their interventions paying attention to the transition events, especially those requiring the involvement of parents (and sometimes the whole family) in developing shared responsibility during the move from family to nursery school environment (Mantovani, Saitta, Bove, 2000). These practices, focused on the dialogue between teachers and family, aspire to develop a community pedagogy aimed at empowering parents and developing their ability to feel confident and competent in the daily decisions concerning the child. (Manini, Gherardi, Balduzzi, 2005). To support parents’ empowerment, teachers develop skills based on different kinds of knowledge, a particular “blend” – made of personal experience, commonsense, tacit knowledge, lessons learned “by ear”, and formal learning - which refers to a set of variously elaborated educational paradigms on early childhood (Bove, 2004; Lindon, 2010). Analyzing this combination of knowledge allows to identify the "epistemological compass" adopted by teachers in supporting parents, and to evaluate it as a contribution to the development of a reflective professional practice (Paige-Smith, Craft, 2007).