Research conducted in recent decades has highlighted the significant role of parental involvement in pupils’ well-being, learning, and future academic success as well as their cognitive, social, and emotional development. Parental involvement practices not only improve parental confidence and satisfaction but also enrich educational programmes, enhance the climate of educational institutions, and ease teachers’ work burden through responsibility-sharing and increased information flow. Even though the benefits of parental involvement are well-supported by various studies, some research reveals that a gap continues to exist between the recommendations of related research and what is actually practiced in educational institutions. This gap explains in part the persistence of insufficient parental involvement practices.

Gaining a better understanding of early childhood educators’ self-reported reasons for insufficient practices as well as identifying their parental involvement practices and their views thereof are key to improving parental involvement. Furthermore, investigating the factors that affect the parental involvement practices and views of these educators can help to explain the gap between rhetoric and practice. In order to obtain insight into these areas, this dissertation aims to get a grasp of early childhood educators’ views and practices of parental involvement in Turkish and Finnish contexts. Furthermore, self-reported reasons for potentially insufficient parental involvement practices are also investigated in order to shed light on the current state of parental involvement in these countries. Moreover, whether similarities or differences exist among early childhood educators’ views on parental involvement and their practices regarding parental involvement are analysed with the aim of drawing conclusions related to cultural and educational policy aspects of parental involvement.

Regarding the selection of the educational contexts examined in this dissertation, the starting point was to identify countries that incorporate historical similarities regarding societal- and policy-level differences that, at the same time, most suitably lend themselves to feasible and objective research. In this regard, the physical and cultural frame of reference of the present researcher in relation to different contexts was considered. For this dissertation, the contexts settled on were Turkey and Finland partly for the straightforward reasons that the researcher’s home country is Turkey and current residence is in Finland. In addition to the researcher’s situation in relation to these contexts, the situation of these countries vis-à-vis each other also creates an interesting research opportunity. The two were founded around the same time; however, they followed different paths with regard to their educational administration in areas such as early childhood education and care governance, budget, and enrolment rates. Considering these factors, Turkey and Finland were chosen for this dissertation.

For different parts of this study, different methods were used, namely, mixed methods and quantitative methods. A representative sample of 287 early childhood educators from Helsinki and 225 early childhood educators from Ankara completed a questionnaire which provided quantitative data and qualitative material. The questionnaire was prepared by the researcher and translated into Turkish and Finnish. To ensure the reliability of translations and minimise the risk of losing relevant information, translator triangulation was
carried out. The questionnaire collects background information including the participants’ educational level, educational background, the age group of their pupils, and their experience in the field. The questionnaire includes five sections in addition to the background information section. The first of these five sections aims to obtain information about the participants’ general views on parental involvement, while each of the remaining four sections focusses on parental involvement practices of a certain parental-involvement type. Each of these sections comprises five-point Likert scale items; in addition, the last four sections also include multiple-choice items with an open-ended option available.

The findings reveal that both the Turkish and the Finnish early childhood educators surveyed believed in the importance of parental involvement. However, they also stated that parental involvement practices are not adequate, in their opinion. The most common reason cited by the participants for this inadequacy is that the parents are not willing to be involved in their child’s early childhood education process. On the other hand, as the least cited reason is that educators think that they are not well-educated enough to involve parents sufficiently, we can draw the conclusion that early childhood educators from both countries have high levels of self-confidence regarding their professional training. An in-depth analysis by means of context analysis uncovered deeper aspects of these reasons in the Finnish context, the most prominent being lack of time on the part of both parents and educators. The similarity continues with the most practiced parental-involvement type, which is learning at home. However, the least used type differs between the two contexts: in the Turkish context, it is involving parents in decision-making, while in the Finnish context; it is involving parents as volunteers. Further comparative analysis uncovered that Turkish early childhood educators implement all types of parental involvement practices with significantly greater frequency than their Finnish counterparts. Additionally, early childhood educators from Finland are more critical of the parental involvement practices than those from Turkey, meaning that more Finnish participants claimed that their implementation of parental involvement was insufficient.

The correlations between the background variables such as participants’ education level, educational background, work experience and the age group they are currently working with, and their view on parental involvement and their parental involvement practices were also investigated. According to results, Turkish and Finnish contexts present different cases. While Turkish participants’ view on parental involvement and preferences of different parental involvement types are independent from their background information; Finnish participants’ certain background variables affect their views on parental involvement and implementations of parental involvement types.

In conclusion, this dissertation presents the current state of parental involvement practices in early childhood education and care institutions in Turkish and Finnish contexts. Moreover, it explains the factors affecting these practices along with self-reported  reasons for their inadequacy. All the findings are categorically discussed for each context, thus allowing for the highlighting of practical implications. In addition to country-centred interpretations, the comparative aspect of this study contributes to existing research into world culture vs. local culture discussions.