A Qualitative Study of Preschool Teachers as Parents

Abstract

As shown by prior research, parents want to know if the parenting advice given to them by preschool teachers is actually followed by those teachers with their own children. This qualitative study of the views of 50 preschool teachers addresses this question directly. A semi-structured interview protocol developed by the researchers was used to collect data, which was then analyzed using the word-list technique. The preschool teachers in our study mostly expected parents to care for their children and to support their self-help skills. The participants also reported some differences between what they expected of their pupils’ parents and their own parenting practices, with some further suggesting that these differences might be the result of teachers’ greater sensitivity and/or lack of strictness and decisiveness in their parental roles.