Different approaches to parental involvement in Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish preschools : A systematic literature review

Abstract: The value and importance of parents being involved in the education of their children is an essential component in the educational model of the Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish preschools, and is reflected in several official policy documents. This thesis is a systematic literature review on the topic of parental involvement and different typologies of parental involvement have been identified. Several authors have described four dimensions in which parental involvement can occur: parental involvement at home, parental involvement at school, parental involvement during home-school communication and parental involvement through community involvement. The aim of this study is to identify the different approaches and cooperation strategies that Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish preschools use to involve parents in the Early Childhood Education and Care of their children and, furthermore, to see if there is any relationship between the practices identified in the studies analyzed in the “results” section of the thesis and the typologies of parental involvement that appear in the “background literature” section of the thesis. The research questions of the present investigation are: 1) What are the different approaches used by Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish preschools in order to involve parents in the preschool education and care of their children?; and 2) What is the relationship between the practices of the studies analyzed and the typologies of parental involvement that appear in the background literature? The results show that parental involvement at home is the most common form of parental involvement in the studies reviewed, while the least common is community involvement. However, the sample of my research is not large enough to obtain conclusive results.