In this module you will:
- Evaluate the role of social power and social influence when working with families of infants and toddlers
- Analyze situations to determine how to share power with families
- Complete the End-of-Semester survey
After reading Allard & Hancok (2015), answer the following questions:
- Summarize the main idea, key details, and what you learned from the reading in 4-6 sentences in your own words. Use key terms and vocabulary from the text.
- What quote(s) was most meaningful to you? (identify the page number) Why?
- How does this reading connect to your personal experience?
- Why is it important to be aware of social power and social influence when working with families of infants and toddlers?
- What impact could culture have on social power and social influence?
- Which vignette from the article do you think most demonstrated the staff empowering the family? Why?
- How will this reading help you be a better infant-toddler professional?
Respond to 2 other posts!
Complete your End-of-Semester Survey on Blackboard!
Allred-Hancock-2015
Summary: In order for teachers to effectively advance their partnership with families they must still get their input and still be able to lead. Teachers can empower partnerships and lead by adopting practices such as servant leaderships. Power strategies can either help in collaborating with families who seek out support or make families not follow recommendation for personal reasons. In cases where families are not on board additional coercion and expertise may be needed. Its important to be honest, have clear dialect even when you don’t know the answer to families questions. Though the pressures from policy makers can cause teachers to feel like they should have full control over decision making of child care, teachers should strongly continue to model shared power with families.
What quote(s) was most meaningful to you? (identify the page number) Why? ” When early childhood teachers presume that leaders is reserved for a select few based on their extraordinary gift talents, and advanced training, it is not surprising that new practitioners envision themselves as leaders (Sullivan 2010)” page 47 This quote is meaningful to me because it shows that regardless of your expertise, gifts, and talents you can still be a great leader as a teacher.
How does this reading connect to your personal experience? This reading makes me think about my experience with my children’s teachers and how they partner with me to make decision on my child’s care and education plan. For instances my child currently receives one-on-one virtual guided instructional through out the week. Recently his teacher mentioned that he was doing really good and gave me the option to either continue getting that support or revisiting it if his grades dropped. I chose for him to continue getting the extra help and loved that she included me in this decision.
Why is it important to be aware of social power and social influence when working with families of infants and toddlers? Social influence and social power are important because its an significant aspect of reciprocal family-professional relationships. Social influence can cause another person to change in some way and have the ability to bring about change that constitutes social power.
What impact could culture have on social power and social influence? Culture can impact social power and social influence when teachers are told not to get too close to families so they can be subjective.
Which vignette from the article do you think most demonstrated the staff empowering the family? Why? Displaying authentic qualities, such as integrity, humility, and vulnerability. Its important to recognized the families concerns and allow them to express that freely. Its also important to take their feelings into consideration and then ultimately letting them know that as a teacher they are on the same page of wanting the best for the child.
How will this reading help you be a better infant-toddler professional? This will help me become a better infant teacher because it helps me realized that although I may not have expertise or specific talents I am still able to be a leader in a classroom. I plan to use the authenticity model because when all fails if families know that you are sincere that will help build strong relationships. The goal is to do what’s best for each child.
Hey Deborah, I enjoyed reading your responses it really does show that you were able to collect a lot of important information and ideas. I always love when you can relate the readings to your personal life about your son. Good Job :).
I agree with what you said as your personal opinion on the last question, I also believe in the importance of building strong relationships
I agree that no matter your level of experience you can still be a great teacher
1). Summarize the main idea, key details, and what you learned from the reading in 4-6 sentences in your own words. Use key terms and vocabulary from the text. The reading focuses on the importance of family professional partnership. In order to do this the article talks about teachers having partnership with families by also being able to lead. When teachers and families communicate it is completely fine not to be aboard with the families opinion however in order to still maintain that respect and healthy relationship we need to try to understand the family and respond respectfully or even it is okay not to know the answer to the question. If families don’t agree with the teachers opinion then the program professionals get involved. Even though teachers may believe everything is up to them about the child we always need to have the okay and the families engagement with the decision making about the child. At the end of the day it is our job to make everyone happy and fulfilled the child’s needs and wants and the best way to do so is by getting the families involved and having a healthy relationship with them and their support.
2). What quote(s) was most meaningful to you? (identify the page number) Why?
The quote that was most meaningful to me was “Professionals can work to accomplish this in practice by reflecting on how and when they offer their expertise and ensuring that they seek the family’s opinions and ideas as often as they share their own (Page 50)”. This quote stood out to me because as I mentioned above we can always say our opinion however it is completely up to the families to decide what is best for the child so we can give our opinion and families decide. It is important that families trust us enough to believe that we also want what’s best for the child however we don’t want to push anything we say they decide is the best strategy to get families involved as well as make them feel that we care enough to also respect their opinion.
3). How does this reading connect to your personal experience?
This reading connects to my personal experience because when I was a child and my mother took me to school my mother and the teacher had a great relationship and a partnership. My teacher would always ask my mother about everything that she was planning to do with me that day and so she involved my mother on all decision making. Also in the future when I have my own children I would also have my children in a program that allows families to be involved in decision making.
4). Why is it important to be aware of social power and social influence when working with families of infants and toddlers? Both social power and social influence play a very important role when working with families of infants and toddlers because they are crucial in order to create family professional partnerships.
5). What impact could culture have on social power and social influence? Culture has an effect in most of the things we do, especially our social power and social influences because the way we think and act is the way we were raised and the way we saw others around us act in certain situations.
6). Which vignette from the article do you think most demonstrated the staff empowering the family? Why? I believe appropriate use of power strategies is the most important one because when working with families and their children you want to use your professional opinions however also getting the families involved in those decisions to do what is the best possible thing for the child with the approval of the families of course.
7). How will this reading help you be a better infant-toddler professional? This article helped me a lot to be a better infant-toddler professional because it has taught me the importance of creating a professional partnership with families that I will work with in the future. Not only creating that bond and partnership bit also getting families involved in decision making about their child. We all have to focus on fulfilling the child’s needs and wants. Without the family’s support and engagement we are not able to fully complete those tasks.
Hey Edisa I agree as teachers we can offer our expertise but its ultimately up to the parent what they feel is best for their children even if we don’t agree with it. I really like how your mom had a strong partnership with your teachers in the past and made sure that she was apart of every decision regarding your academics.
I Agree with your quote there are times for our expertise but when it comes to the best care for the infants and toddlers in our care it is best to ask their parents since they know best.
The reading focuses on the importance of family/teacher partnership. The article talks about teachers having relationships/bonds with the families by also being able to still be in charge. When teachers and families communicate great the families can have an opinion and we need to understand the family and respond respectfully and take in there opions. It is our job to make sure the family and child are happy by getting the families involved and having a healthy communicating relationship with them.
This relates to my personal experience because my mom was always involved in my school making friends with the teachers and voicing her opion.
This will help me as a professional by learning to take parents opions and suggestions into consideration while respectfuly putting my idea/opion out there.
Hey Kayla, I like how you summarized the reading it really shows that you have understood the reading well. When working with children the most important thing we need to focus on is creating that partnership and relationship/ bond as you mention.
Hey Kayla I like how you summarized the article and related it back to your own experience of how your mom was involved in your schooling. I too believe partnerships are really important and while we respectfully offer our ides and opinions to families they ultimately have the final decision.
1. Summarize the main idea, key details, and what you learned from the reading in 4-6 sentences in your own words. Use key terms and vocabulary from the text.
The article talked about creating effective family-professional partnerships. For early childhood teachers, this means that they must practice the action of caring in their workspace while growing their own leadership. One way is in Servant leadership where it focuses on the needs and goals of others which includes the families and the children they are working with and the people that you work with. This includes that they display consistent security and integrity to the families. The second one the traditional leadership model emphasizes collaboration and limits the potential teachers as leaders in their workspace.
2. What quote(s) was most meaningful to you? (identify the page number) Why?
A quote that was meaningful to me is seen on page 52 that states “there is a growing need for early childhood professionals to assume practitioner-level leadership that supports caring relationships with families based on shared power.” This quote helps me realize that this is something that in many places that this shared power is important and must place into practice to have an environment where teachers and parents can work together and learn from each other.
3. How does this reading connect to your personal experience?
This reading connects to a experience I remember because I knew of a friend who’s child went to daycare and she said that the caregivers would tell her that her daughter cried all day but never asked her what could help and she felt like the care center did not care for her daughter at all and had to pull her out of the daycare center.
4. Why is it important to be aware of social power and social influence when working with families of infants and toddlers?
It is important to be aware of social power and social influence when working with infants/toddlers because it can cause our actions to change the infant’s and toddlers’ actions and words.
5. What impact could culture have on social power and social influence?
Each one of us grew up with our point of view in child care we may let our point of view on how the infants and toddlers should be taken of and it can prevent us from accepting their families culture.
6. Which vignette from the article do you think most demonstrated the staff empowering the family? Why?
The voluntary subordination because it is a voluntary response when a teacher accepts that the parents are the child’s first teacher and asks the parent for help on how to help care for the child.
7. How will this reading help you be a better infant-toddler professional?
This reading will help me become a better infant and toddler professional because it emphasizes the importance of creating the parent and caregiver relationship. Also by not letting my own culture influence how I believe what child care should be about.
1. This article mainly spoke about creating effective family-professional partners. the article talks about teachers having partnership with families by also being able to lead. Its important to be honest, have clear dialect even when you don’t know the answer to families questions. Though the pressures from policy makers can cause teachers to feel like they should have full control over decision making of child care, teachers should strongly continue to model shared power with families.
2. ” … it is not surprising that new practitioners envision themselves as leaders (Sullivan 2010)” page 47. This quote stood out to me because it shows that no matter your level of experience you can be a great teacher to others.
3. This doesn’t relate much to my personal experience
4. Its important to be aware of social influence and power because they go hand in hand when it comes to building important family professional relationships
5.Culture can impact social power and social influence when teachers are told not to get too close to families so they can be subjective.
6. It is a voluntary response when it comes to deciding and realizing that the child’s parents will be the child’s first teacher.
7. It helps me realized that although I may not have expertise or specific talents I am still able to be a leader in a classroom.
Hi Daisy, I like how you summarized the article
1. This article mainly spoke about creating effective family-professional partners. the article talks about teachers having partnership with families by also being able to lead. Its important to be honest, have clear dialect even when you don’t know the answer to families questions. Though the pressures from policy makers can cause teachers to feel like they should have full control over decision making of child care, teachers should strongly continue to model shared power with families.
2. ” … it is not surprising that new practitioners envision themselves as leaders (Sullivan 2010)” page 47. This quote stood out to me because it shows that no matter your level of experience you can be a great teacher to others.
3. This doesn’t relate much to my personal experience
4. Its important to be aware of social influence and power because they go hand in hand when it comes to building important family professional relationships
5.Culture can impact social power and social influence when teachers are told not to get too close to families so they can be subjective.
6. It is a voluntary response when it comes to deciding and realizing that the child’s parents will be the child’s first teacher.
7. It helps me realized that although I may not have expertise or specific talents I am still able to be a leader in a classroom.
I reviewed this module
I agree that the drop-off scene video demonstrates power sharing and empowerment by having an active communication between the teacher and the father and later on the child as well. When the father drops off the child, him and the teacher communicate about what the child has done on the weekend and the food that he has to eat that day.. It’s always important to have an open mind all the time.
Module closed