Perceived instrumentality of early childhood education: parents’ valued future goals for their children

Abstract

ABSTRACT Adopting an integrative grounded theory approach, this study aimed to uncover parents’ perceptions of instrumentality regarding early childhood education within the scope of their children’s academic skills, social-emotional development, and occupational aspirations. A total of 32 parents, each with at least one child enrolled in a preschool for no less than one year, were recruited from a large city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey through snowball sampling. The data were collected through online semi-structured interviews and analysed using a three-step systematic framework of analysis. The results revealed that parents’ perceptions of instrumentality regarding early childhood education included diverse and meaningful categories related to their children’s academic skills, social-emotional development, and occupational aspirations. Notably, the results also demonstrated that, in comparison to academic skills and occupational aspirations, parents perceived early childhood education as more instrumental in enhancing their children’s social-emotional development. Consequently, the results of the present study enabled the emergence of a new adaptive theory of perceived instrumentality in early childhood education.