My Early Childhood Education (ECE) institution is a Japanese Kindergarten. The main language of instruction is Japanese and the setting and culture of the kindergarten is predominantly Japanese. I teach English as a second language to children of age three to six. The kindergarten’s mission is to provide a holistic educational program for students and excellent opportunities for early childhood educators, providing the young children with knowledge and skills to make them independent and responsible. The kindergarten works closely with parents involving them in the success of their child. The vision of the institution is to be a leading bilingual (Japanese and English) education provider in Hong Kong.
In this paper, I will identify the strengths and weaknesses of my kindergarten in relation to parental involvement and will make
…show more content…
This will benefit those children who learn a foreign language, like English in my kindergarten, with the help of their mother tongue (Japanese or Chinese) retain the learning and vocabulary faster. Mother tongue based learning offers substantial academic and educational advantages which have been reported consistently in the academic literature (Baker 2001). The fourth area is to include parents in the decision making process in the Kindergarten.
Epstein (2001) developed a framework consisting of six types of parental involvement. The six domains are (1) Parenting; (2) Learning at home; (3) Home-school communication; (4) Volunteering; (5) Decision making which involves parents in school decisions; and (6) Collaborating with the community which integrates services and resources from the community to strengthen schools, families, and children’s learning. My recommendations made above come under the Home-school communication, volunteering and decision making involving parents of Epstein (2001)