Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model (1989) views the child in the ecological perspective in which individual’s personal experiences are nested in an interconnected system. During the first years of life, the home environment is the primary determinant of social skills of the individual. However, when a child starts to go to school, the child interacts both with the school environment and the home environment. During this time new contributors to development of the individual come into play (Kail, 2007). Therefore, the importance of making collaborations with parents and encouraging them to involve in the daily operations of schooling becomes important for early childhood professionals and researchers (Knopf & Swick, 2007). Parents’ involvement in school and their children’s education is defined at seven different levels: parent as an active partner and educational leader at home and at school, parent as a decision maker, parent as an advocate for the school, parent actively involved as volunteer or paid employee, parent as a liaison between school and home to support homework, parent as a supporter of the educational goals of the school, and parent as a recipient of education and support (Berger, 2004). Family oriented approaches in education are considered as a variable contributing to variations in child, parent, and family functioning. When parents are involved in their children’s early intervention better outcomes are realized (Henderson, 1998). It is found that involving parents to education of their children helps children have higher levels of success and achievement, effects children’s social-psychological development, motivation at school, and increases the attendance of children to the school (Celenk, 2003; Yildirim & Donmez, 2008; Sheldon, 2007; Gursimsek 2003). However, in order to help the parents take part in their children’s education the school administrators and teachers need to provide a structured way of parent involvement for the parents. The current study investigates the parent involvement activities performed in private preschools in Turkey. Specifically, the types of activities that private preschools provide, administrators’ and teachers’ views about parent involvement, how they participate in parent involvement activities and what types of activities they do will be documented through interviews with selected private preschool administrators and teachers.

The participants of the study are the teachers and the administrators of four private preschools in Ankara. The four private schools are selected based the payment level they require from the parents. Two interviews, one with the teacher and one with the administrator, are done in each school. Participating teachers and administrators are selected based on the willingness they have in providing information. An interview protocol prepared by the researcher is used as data collection instrument in which the questions about teachers’ and administrators’ views about parent involvement activities done by school are asked. Data analysis is done through organizing the data and finding out themes and condensing the codes (Creswell, 2007). The triangulation is done through data sources as one teacher and one administrator from each school.

Preliminary findings of the study indicate that two way communication activities are performed in the preschools as home school activity packets and alumni events. The programs are mostly planned by the school administrators depending on the curriculum. The types of the activities differ depending on the characteristics of the institution. Private preschools which are high in monthly payment provide more planned parent involvement activities whereas private preschools which are low in monthly payments provide less parent involvement activities. After further analyses of the interviews, information about the viewpoint of the school administrators towards parent involvement, the content of the parent involvement activities, the place of the teachers and the school administrator on parent involvement programs will be discussed.