Strategies for Enhancing Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Education for Improved Cognitive and Social Development in Enugu State

This study focused on strategies for enhancing parental involvement in early childhood education in Enugu State. Specifically, it determined strategies for: promoting parents’ involvement in activities that promote cognitive and social development of preschool-aged children; and ways early childhood educators with caregivers could collaborate with parents to improve home-school involvement practices. Three hypotheses (HOs) were tested at 0.05. Survey research design was adopted. Population comprised parents, early childhood education teachers, and school administrators across 147 approved early childhood centres in the state. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Mean, standard deviation and ANOVA were used to analyze data. Findings reveal: 11 strategies for promoting parents’ involvement in children’s cognitive development, including encouraging ̅ parents to read regularly with their children (X = 3.58), amongst others; 10 strategies for promoting social development including cultural storytelling to foster empathy ̅ (X = 3.44) and so on; as well as 12 effective home–school collaboration strategies ̅ including regular parent–teacher meetings (X = 3.57) and text messaging and mobile ̅ applications for communication (X = 3.46), amongst others. ANOVA results show no significant differences among the mean responses of parents, teachers, and administrators on all identified strategies, at 0.05 level of significance.