Enhancing parent-teacher partnership to meet the challenges of early childhood education curriculum development in Kenya

Educational curriculum development is a shared responsibility amongst parents and teachers, especially in ECDE, where both must work very closely to lay a firm foundation for the child. This paper examines the challenges faced by pre-school teachers and parents in curriculum development process, and ways in which parents and teachers can enhance a partnership in early childhood curriculum development. A descriptive research design was adopted. The data sources were: a parental involvement questionnaire for pre-school teachers, a parental involvement interview schedule for the pre-school parents, and document analysis. Simple random and saturated samplings were employed for the pre-school parents and teachers respectively. Multiple data analysis methods were used. Although pre-school parents and teachers wanted to be involved in early childhood curriculum development, teachers did not know the specific activities of involving parents. Furthermore, the partnership was hampered by barriers to parental involvement in early childhood curriculum development emanating from both parents and teachers. The study recommended: employment of pre-school teachers by the Teachers Service Commission and of Quality Assurance and Standards Officers with the knowledge base on early childhood to enforce practice of early childhood education policy and review of the pre-school teacher.