Communication matters: A comparative study of school-parent collaboration for enhancing young children’s development in Hong Kong and Mainland China

"Many parents today have an educational perspective based on current theory and trends. Schools need to educate parents about the current situation in today's education, help parents to understand the children’s need to develop skills and attitudes in co-constructing beyond a knowledge driven curriculum. Hong Kong Education Bureau proclaims the roles and responsibilities of parents, in the belief that parents are the primary educators for young children at home and play an active role in the education of their children as partners of the school (Cheng, 2015). On the other hand, parents in the Mainland China have become more conscious about how to play their part in home-school collaboration and engage themselves in children’s education, especially in face of the Two-child policy (Fang, et. al. 2018).

As a school, it is important to provide education for parents to create a collaborative relationship between parents and educators, empowering life success to students with learning intentions. Communication has always been the key factor in fostering parents-school collaboration. However recent trends revealed schools’ concern of additional factors influencing the parent-school relationship and communication process – 'transparency’ and ‘frequency’ have played a role in parents’ understanding of what goes on in children’s school life.
 
In this paper, educators from Hong Kong and Guangdong Province of Mainland China will share ways of kindergartens from the two regions in educating and communicating with parents, and how parents can be supported as part of their child’s learning journey. Technology provides online channels for parents to be informed, while face-to-face and other offline options are still being considered as commonly-used for communication. For data collection, survey questionnaires were sent to kindergarten principals from Hong Kong and Guangdong to explore ways of communication and collaboration between schools and parents that will encourage a common understanding of children’s learning and further enhance children’s development." Copyright © 2018 70th OMEP World Assembly and Conference.