ABSTRACT
Parents and educators need to establish a positive partnership to promote child development. Recent changes in Dutch early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies were targeted at improving the quality of care and included a focus on parent engagement. One of the primary barriers to engage parents, though, is the preparation of educators with concrete knowledge, skills and positive attitudes about parental engagement (Broussard, 2000). It is currently unclear how educators will be trained to improve parent engagement. The new policies will also require a shift in thinking for both parents and educators in the Netherlands from seeing ECEC as primarily improving children’s social skills to communities of high-quality care benefitting children’s development.
