DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0272
Introduction: Partnerships with Families in the Early Years, birth-8
Parental involvement, engagement, and partnerships within the early years have become key policy directions in many countries in recent years (see the separate
Oxford Bibliographies article in Education Family Policy and Its Relation to Early Childhood). Since the early 2000s there has been a global push to include guidelines for educators that focus on the engagement and enactment of partnerships with families, especially in the early years. However, the family-educator partnership literature is varied, does not reach consensus on what is meant by “partnership,” and fails to provide a clear definition of parent-family partnerships in early years settings. This lack of a clear definition and the interchangeability of terms used to describe the phenomena creates ambiguity of what authentic partnerships are and often culminates in a deficit approach to the discussion. For ex