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Family and community engagement in early childhood education governance

Description:
Somewhat paradoxically, engaging families and communities in early childhood systems governance is both risky and essential. Involving them is risky because family and community involvement can be disruptive to the planning, decisionmaking, and administrative functions of governance. Yet, involving them is essential because their role is of paramount importance in the lives of young children. So, how can families and communities be engaged with early childhood governance, avoiding the risks while leveraging the deepest potential? This chapter gives a simple, direct answer: by making sure that engagement is deep and mutual, that a wide range of opportunities for engagement is available, and that the manner of engagement provides true power-sharing. The way early childhood governance does this is by creating or transforming its structures and the way it does its business (planning, oversight, coordination, and accountability). Given the abundant attention to creating effective governance, this chapter considers how the structures of early childhood governance and the practices of governing entities should be changed to engage families and communities, not only in the work of governance itself but in the broader enterprise of building early childhood systems. (author abstract)
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