Parental Involvement in a Program for Preschoolers Learning a Foreign Language

Abstract

The role of parental involvement in the sense of home-based or school-based programs for supporting children’s early literacy development and education in the Greek state school context has not been well established. The ‘PIECE’ (Parental Involvement for the Engagement, Cooperation and Empowerment) program is a novel inclusion program implemented for a school year in a kindergarten in Northern Greece, which aims at enhancing parental involvement in a preschool foreign language learning setting. It targeted parents by including both school and home components with the ultimate purpose to support their role in improving preschoolers’ early foreign language (FL) literacy. This type of involvement was operationalized as partnership among the researchers, the school and the parents. More specifically, they were involved in school activities and meetings, while they also spent quality time with their children at home doing activities and utilizing digital educational materials to support preschoolers’ learning. The results obtained from questionnaires distributed to parents, the teacher/researcher’s journal and the focus group discussions indicated the importance of “parental” involvement for effective FL learning in the early years. Concluding, the findings suggest that parental involvement in early language learning projects contributes to the enhancement of young children’s oracy and literacy skills.