Re-conceptualizing Parents’ Participation during the Transition from Home to Infant-toddler Centers: Insights and examples from a cross cultural research in two University-Lab centres (Italy-US)

Research in early childhood education (ECE) settings, that highlights good relationships between parents and educators (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Epstein, 2001), is a crucial component of high quality education. This is especially true during the infant-toddler years. In Italy, parents’ involvement represents a main axis in the discussion on the quality of the services (Mantovani, 2007). Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) and an emphasis on routines during transition in infant-toddler centers have informed “typical practices” such as “inserimento” (Bove, 2001) versus “pick-up and drop-off” in the US. These disparate practices of participation are challenged today by the encounter with families who have different educational values, customs, and ideas on how to best educate the children. The presentation will illustrate lessons learned from a cross-cultural study of teacher practice in two Italian/US lab schools (Moran et al., in preparation). We will make a case that there is a need to find and re-define a good balance in parents’ participation during the transition process, seen as privileged observatory, by: illustrating selected culturally-situated definitions of parent involvement during transitions in both contexts, revealing differences in how teachers interpret and interact with parents, and showing the impact of iterative cycles of video and discourses analyses to de-automatize teacher practice.