Parent’s perceptions of the care and education their children receive in school are influenced by the relationship between the parent and the teachers. This is why early childhood teachers attempt to provide positive relationship with parents in the educational process (Knopf & Swick, 2007). For this reason the teacher should not work alone to achieve their goals in terms of parental involvement. Most of the decisions about school policies need to be taken in consultation with the relevant parties; parents, teachers and the school administrators (Batey, 1996).

Studies conducted on parental involvement indicated that parental involvement has profits for families, schools, and children (Epstein et al. 2002; Wen, Bulotsky-Shearer, Vaughn & Korfmacher, 2012). It increases the academic performance of children (Fan & Chen, 2001; Izzo, Weissberg, Kasprow & Fendrich, 1999,& Yıldırım & Dönmez, 2008); motivation at school (Warner, 2010); helps teachers be more effective in teaching process and use the parents as resources (Gestwicki, 2004); and increases parents self confidence in child and school related issues (Yıldırım & Dönmez, 2008).

Involving parents in the educational process is also considered as an important issue in Turkish early childhood education system. Indeed in Turkey, the schools which are supervised under Ministry of National Education (MoNE) are to follow the national early childhood education program. In this program parental involvement is stated as an important part of early childhood education. In the program book it is claimed that parental involvement is important and as a resource for learning, daily life experiences and those in the community should be fostered (MoNE, 2006).

In the study of Erdoğan and Demirkasımoğlu (2010), teachers reported that they believe they should establish partnership with parents. When asked about their practices they said that, in fact, they do not set partnerships with parents. The reasons for their lack of partnership with parents were reported as; parents’ negative attitudes towards them; parents’ acting as if they know how to teach more than the teachers; and parents’ attempting to teach the teachers and administrators how to do their job. When parental involvement issue is investigated from the point of view of the parents, Yıldırım and Dönmez (2008) revealed that teachers’ negative, distanced and authoritarian attitudes toward parents; and know-it-all attitudes are the primary barriers perceived by parents as barriers to their involvement in the child’s schooling. The stated findings duplicate the different perspectives of parents and teachers about parental involvement. While for parents parental involvement is defined as making children go to school and keeping them safe; for teachers, it is defined as parent’s presence at school (Anderson & Minke, 2007).

When the studies conducted in Turkish literature on parental involvement perceptions and barriers investigated, it is found that there is a lack of instruments and too much to learn about parental involvement beliefs of teachers and parents. Because of this reason, the purpose of the current study was to adapt School and Family Partnerships Questionnaire (Epstein & Salinas, 1993) into Turkish and conduct their validity- reliability analysis.

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