Research suggests that parenting education can be a mechanism for transformative learning that will result in changed positive parenting practices which in turn improve outcomes for children (First and Way, 1995; Huebner, 2002).
Interestingly, Mezirow’s three levels of reflection – content, process and premise – appear to link harmoniously with Miller and Sambel’s three parenting education learning goals (2003) which themselves require increasing levels of critical reflection. The dispensing model focuses on facts, knowledge and strategies, the relating model is about exploring feelings about the process of being a parent and in the reflecting model and parents unpack their own values, attitudes and behaviour.
Group parenting education provides a social setting within which parents can transform personal perspectives so that they do not unreflectively rely on hidden assumptions when making important decisions such as those associated with parenting. It offers a place where parents discover that they are uncritically following the way they were parented. This is a process of developing conscious parenting.
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It can provide a place whereby data can be presented to start the questioning process. It can offer the ‘social brain’ a place to dialogue with others in a community of learners and enable reflection to occur. Mezirow (1990, p. 357) believes: "Every adult educator has a responsibility for fostering critical self-reflection and helping learners plan to take action."
III. Ethical considerations
This research was planned in accordance with the ethical guidelines of Massey University. Particular attention was paid to full disclosure and consent. A detailed ethics application was submitted to Massey University’s Ethics Committee. This was approved in September 2008. (See Appendix III for relevant documents.)
Since Māori parents were involved in the study, consultation took place with Plunket’s Maori Health Services Team and informal conversations continued with team members on different aspects of the study (see Appendix III). All participants were given information sheets explaining the study and its purpose and consent and confidentiality forms were available for them to sign (see Appendix III).
Written permission was received from organisers to name all three programmes in this report, findings were shared with them while it was in draft form and their comments taken into consideration in the final version. Anonymity was preserved for individual parent participants.
Ensuring that parents were aware that they were participating in a research study was relatively simple during the organised focus group and interviews. But for the continual conversations and observations that arose while ‘walking alongside’ staff from the Nurturing the Future programme was a challenge since we moved between different venues and individual families in a short space of time and these settings were often informal. It is recognised that this is an issue when researchers are observing people’s daily lives, talking to them, watching them, asking questions, writing down what they are saying and analysing what they are doing (O’Reilly, 2005). The researcher took the responsibility for ensuring people conversed with were aware of the study and its purpose. No individual was audio-taped without the researcher seeking their permission first. This was particularly important for some of the personal histories and stories parents shared which were very revealing and often very personal. No stories were used in this report unless parents were aware the research was taking place, they had received the information about its purpose and had given their consent that their story be used.
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IV.
Research design
An interpretivist approach was taken with the research because this seemed most in harmony with its transformative learning theoretical framework. Central to interpretivism is the belief that people are constantly interpreting the world as it changes about them (Williamson, 2002). This is in alignment with the core principle of transformative learning that “there is an instinctive drive among all humans to make meaning of their daily lives” (Taylor, 2008, p.5). In interpretivist research “naturalistic inquiry” is favoured with field work and observation taking place in the natural setting where the activity or subject being researched normally takes place.
Naturalistic inquiry meant research would take place among the parents and programme organisers – observing and interacting with them in their own communities, their own natural settings, as they took part in the programmes which were the subject of the study.
An in-depth understanding of the topic was required and from a practical viewpoint this was best obtained by exploring a limited number of programmes (three were chosen) from all key people’s perspectives (or key informants as Burgess (1984) describes them). These were the organisers, facilitators and parents. An in-depth understanding also meant a single research method was not sufficient to obtain data from multiple and complex sources.
It was decided a bricolage approach to the research design would be taken using multiple methods to uncover the richness of the parents’ stories and enable a flexible response as new research opportunities emerged during fieldwork in the parents’ own settings. Kincheloe (2004) says that bricolage “is typically understood to involve the process of employing these methodological strategies as they are needed in the unfolding context of the research situation” (p. 1).
Using a bricolage family of methods enabled the direct involvement and “sustained contact with human agents within the context of their daily lives (and cultures)” (O’Reilly, 2005, p. 3).
Descriptive information about each programme was gathered. But deeper information was also needed about each programme. Descriptions of the history and structure of each organisation provided the ‘how’, but the ‘why’ was of huge importance. The philosophies behind each programme’s design impacted on how they were delivered. Organisers’ and facilitators’ opinions and stories needed to be heard to tease out patterns about what was effective in their particular parenting education programme. For this reason both qualitative semi-structured and unstructured
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interviews were part of the research design. Informational leaflets and other documentation, including any previous research that had already been carried out on the programme were also synthesized.
Gathering the rich, authentic narratives about parents’ experiences, it was felt, was the best way to discover if transformative learning had occurred as a result of participation in the programmes. These stories and anecdotes became data. An assumption was made that if transformative learning had led to positive change it was reasonable to expect long-term benefits were more likely to follow.
Listening to parents discuss their experiences in groups was considered a good way of exploring how learning took place when parents shared meanings and dialogue. To achieve this, parents’ focus groups from each of the three programmes were included.
Opportunities to observe key events (where something happens that is likely to be revealing) were also taken - such as observing facilitators running groups as part of their normal programme delivery. O’Reilly (2005), when describing observation, says it is “watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions” (p. 3). Observation in naturalistic settings was important because, coming from an interpretivist point of view, human behaviour is best understood in the context of people’s own particular social setting.
It was highly likely that other opportunities for collecting data would emerge during the seven months allocated for data collection (it turned out to be 12 months). For this reason a journal was kept throughout the process. A digital recorder and copies of the study’s information sheet and consent forms were kept to hand to enable the recording of any spontaneous unstructured interviews that emerged.
V.
Selection of participants
The selection of participants fell into two categories: 1. Parenting education programmes to be studied.
2. Within these selected programmes, parents for the focus groups.