The Covid-19 crisis has had and continues to have profound impacts on the continuity of learning of young children. While families and early years practitioners faced unprecedented challenges and demands, the crisis also urged us to explore new approaches to developing early childhood education, especially around parental engagement strategies and practices (Education Scotland, 2020; Ribeiro et al., 2021). As a PhD researcher and an early years practitioner, I became interested in how parental engagement in children’s learning worked in real-life contexts beyond the nursery setting during the pandemic. By understanding better parents’ interactions with young children, new insights can be gained to help us consider effective parental engagement practices that support young children’s learning experiences during crises and beyond.

“Parental engagement” can be considered as the active involvement and interactions of parents with their children’s learning in a variety of contexts, such as early learning and childcare settings, the community, and through family learning in the home (Education Scotland, 2019; Epstein, 2018). However, previous literature and the emerging ones under the pandemic tended to mainly limit the discursive power to practitioners and parents, which means that children, especially those who are at a formative stage in their lives and their growing civic awareness, are rarely consulted in this important debate on parental engagement (Oppenheim et al., 2022). In Scottish early years education, parental engagement has always been an enduring theme that has resonated in an array of policies and guidelines to make efforts to promote children’s learning and development with the engagement of parents and family members (Bryce et al., 2018). This academic and political discourse has been given prominence in the early years even more than ever along with national policies and studies that immediately responded to it after the outbreak of Covid-19, though still without seeking the voices of young children (Bynner et al., 2020). My PhD research is intended to address the absence of young children’s views and experiences in the research literature on parental engagement during the pandemic, which is too often dominated by adults’ narratives (Pascal & Bertram, 2021). Listening to children’s voices is also aligned with the Scottish Government’s initiative to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (2009) into its legislation to ensure that children’s rights are respected and their views are heard over matters that may affect them (Scottish Government, 2020).

Additionally, my research also specifically considers parental engagement through the lens of Froebelian pedagogy. As a prominent discourse in early childhood education, Froebelian pedagogy is distinct as this approach rests upon the idea that parents and families form the basis for a child’s learning (Bruce, 2021). Based on the Froebelian approach that emphasises the integrity of childhood in its own right, parenting and family engagement as well as children's voices are the essential tenets of this pedagogy (Tovey, 2017). Thus, the Froebelian context can be uniquely stimulating for me to rethink in-depth the principles, values, and implications of parental engagement,

Overall, this research aims to explore young children’s learning experience with parental engagement during and after the Covid-19 crisis and examine how the Froebelian principles and practices shape parental engagement with young children’s learning during the pandemic and beyond. The research questions are:

• How do young children from a Froebelian setting experience parents’ interactions with their learning under and after Covid-19?
• How do parents from a Froebelian setting perceive and engage with their children’s learning under and after the Covid-19 crisis?
• To what extent Froebelian pedagogy offers opportunities and challenges for parental engagement with young children’s learning during and after the Covid-19 crisis?

Underpinned by the research purposes and research questions, a qualitative multiple case study was chosen as the overarching research design and a diverse range of methods was adopted to collect data from and with different groups of research participants. The chosen methodology allowed me to investigate the complexities and particularities of individual child’s learning experiences with their parents’ engagement in their own real-life situations as well as the contextual influences (especially the characteristics of the Froebelian pedagogy) upon those experiences (Stake, 2005). The data collection was carried out in two Froebelian-underpinned nurseries in Scotland. There were eight young children aged from three to five and their parents, as well as six Froebelian-trained practitioners, were recruited as research participants in this research. Semi-structured individual interviews were carried out with parents and practitioners respectively. The interviews with parents explored their views and experiences concerning engaging with their children’s learning under and after the Covid-19 crisis. Specifically, issues related to how parents support their young children’s learning outwith the nursery and in what ways as well as their thoughts on those associated experiences. In addition, parents’ perceptions of Froebelian practices and their relations to their interactions with children’s learning were also investigated. For practitioners and headteachers, interviews were utilised to acquire essential information about the Froebelian approach and its principles, and particularly the underpinning practices and provisions for engaging and supporting parents with young children’s learning before, and during the pandemic times and till now. Document analysis was also conducted to gather data from parents and practitioners via associated public and personal documents concerning parental engagement work with children’s learning before, during and after the outbreak of Covid-19. Meanwhile, both settings were encouraged to share pictures or videos of children’s home-based or community-based, nursery-based learning moments/materials which was also a preparation for the later activity with children. For the young child participants, multiple participatory and visual methods were employed to allow children to document their experiences through their point of view and support to break down the disparities in power to facilitate their expressions with researchers, contributing to research with children rather than on children (Clark, 2011). Specifically, this study adopted a variety of visual and verbal activities, including photo-elicitation, photovoice and magic wand for the purpose of effectively capturing young children’s views and experiences in a diverse way (Butschi & Hedderich, 2021; Epstein et al., 2006; Shaw, 2021).

I have recently completed the data collection and I am currently analysing the data, which is expected to finish by June 2023. The preliminary findings are emerging and evolving. The fieldwork and initial familiarisation with datasets indicate that parents and families encountered barriers to engaging with their children's continuous learning during the pandemic, whereas a Froebelian approach and its underpinned principles, provide diverse and insightful practices to support parental engagement in children's learning, particularly during the pandemic and lockdown time. For example, Froebelian occupations, such as sewing, cooking and planting, tend to open opportunities for effective learning interactions between parents and young children at home or in the community. However, being unable to fully and explicitly recognise a Froebelian approach by parents may impede their understanding of the practitioners' and nursery's practices and provisions, resulting in negative impacts on developing a strengthened home learning environment for young children. Further findings are expected to emerge on how young children experienced their learning with parents’ engagement during and after the pandemic. In the presentation, I plan to share preliminary findings on the learning interactions and experiences of young children with their parents during the pandemic and how a Froebelian approach shapes that and impacts the diverse parental engagement practices in Froebelian early years contexts.

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