Contemporary forms of family and school collaboration in the process of preparing children for starting school

Abstract

Taking into account the modern living conditions characterized by an accel-erated rate of life and work, the rapid development and progress of scienceand technology, the role of families in preparing children for school isbecoming increasingly important. The collaboration between the familyand the school is also necessary because of the expectations that the socie-ty has from the educational systems to enable the child with the emotionalstability and undisturbed growth and progression, and to make sure thatthe child accepts the transition to primary school in the best possible way.This type of collaboration is also necessary because it is one of the condi-tions for the manifestation of the positive effects of the upbringing and theeducational process. Realization of the education and upbringing work,apart from the continuous collaboration, also implies attentiveness of theparents for some of the particular and individual ways of collaboration. It ison these assumptions that the very outcome of the collaboration betweenthe families and the school depends. The methods and domains of the fami-ly influence are abundant and diverse and they depend upon thecharacteristics of the wider social community in which the child is growingup, as well as the readiness of the parents, which shall be described in thiswork.The success of the Home-School Collaboration greatly depends upon theteacher’s personality and the way in which the teacher communicates withthe parents, as well as the teacher’s readiness to meet the needs of the par-ents whose child is starting school. The communication channels mustalways be open, otherwise, the efforts might become ineffective. These as-sumptions will be examined theoretically and empirically in this work.