Abstract
Promoting literacy is a lifelong, dynamic, and multidimensional socio-cultural process that considers children's knowledge resources and invests in positive relationships and interactions between their multiple contexts of development. It encompasses a set of competences, i.e. children's knowledge, attitudes, and skills relating to multimodal, modern communication, in both its oral and written dimensions. Cooperation between School-Family-Community is a fundamental priority in this process and a key element of the socio-pedagogical orientation of the modern school. Through socio-pedagogical approaches, literacy extends beyond the walls of the classroom, acquiring an experiential and participatory character that enhances learning and its connection with everyday life. This paper examines the contribution of a socio-pedagogical, collaborative School-Family-Community program to the literacy of preschool children through a socio-pedagogical and systems approach. Although relevant intervent ...
Promoting literacy is a lifelong, dynamic, and multidimensional socio-cultural process that considers children's knowledge resources and invests in positive relationships and interactions between their multiple contexts of development. It encompasses a set of competences, i.e. children's knowledge, attitudes, and skills relating to multimodal, modern communication, in both its oral and written dimensions. Cooperation between School-Family-Community is a fundamental priority in this process and a key element of the socio-pedagogical orientation of the modern school. Through socio-pedagogical approaches, literacy extends beyond the walls of the classroom, acquiring an experiential and participatory character that enhances learning and its connection with everyday life. This paper examines the contribution of a socio-pedagogical, collaborative School-Family-Community program to the literacy of preschool children through a socio-pedagogical and systems approach. Although relevant interventions are recorded in the relevant literature, the majority of them reflect the model of strengthening family literacy, attempting to 'train' parents to achieve favorable changes in the family environment that will benefit the child. These interventions often overlook the interactions between family and school and treat the family as distinct from the school. A program was designed and implemented that included pre-testing and post-testing based on Epstein's typology of parental involvement. The socio-educational program aimed to strengthen School-Family-Community collaboration, emphasizing children's literacy skills, adopting a holistic, systemic orientation through active family and community involvement. A natural but also supportive e-learning community was created through the Moodle platform. The objectives of the research were to record the needs of parents and teachers, to evaluate the contribution of the program to the views and practices of parents and teachers and to the children's literacy competences, and to investigate the parameters of the socio-educational program that positively or negatively influenced the enhancement of parental involvement and School-Family-Community collaboration. The study follows a combination of collaborative action research and quasiexperimental design, with pre-and post-testing for group evaluation, involving ten kindergartens from three geographical regions of Greece. The complexity of the issue required a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to approach certain aspects of the issue. In particular, the following were used: questionnaires, individual and group interviews, weighted tools for assessing children's language indicators, as well as protocols for reflection and recording critical events. A multi-method analytical design was adopted, utilizing primarily qualitative and selectively, where necessary, quantitative analysis, ensuring an understanding of different aspects of the issues being investigated. The findings underline the important contribution of School-Family-Community collaboration in enhancing the literacy of preschool children. This collaboration appeared to work both through the active involvement of parents in literacy activities in the family and especially in the school environment and through the transformations observed in the perceptions of parents and kindergarten teachers. At the same time, the parent-teacher and parent-child relationship was strengthened, revealing the importance of the qualitative dimension of parental involvement in enhancing the cooperation between these three contexts of children's development (School-Family-Community), as well as in promoting the literacy skills of preschool children of formal development. The systematic and active involvement of parents in the family and school environment, the clear formulation of objectives, the playful and accessible nature of the activities, the use of the e-learning community - although it revealed some difficulties - the action research and the flexibility of the socio-pedagogical program, were highlighted by the participants' evaluation as the characteristics that worked positively. At the same time, lack of time and resistance to changes in parents' perceptions, as reported by the kindergarten teachers, appeared to be important limiting factors. To further understand these issues, further research focusing on these points is needed to develop longer-term social education programs and re-evaluate them through more participation and longer-term follow-up. This research highlights the importance of a multi-level strategy to enhance parental involvement in early childhood literacy, starting from action research as a key means of implementation and development. Action research functions as a dynamic mechanism for selfevaluation and development of all stakeholders, incorporating meaningful collaboration between parents and teacher-researchers, systematic feedback, flexible educational methods as well as enhancing the use of the digital environment, with the aim of sustainability and effectiveness of socio-educational programs.
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