Teachers' beliefs about the role of the family in
culturally responsive curriculum
Freire and Macedo (1999) suggested that interactions
with families should embrace respect, reciprocity and
responsiveness. The teachers in this study all recognised
the need for close partnerships w ith families. They
identified families as valuable and indispensable members
of the early childhood setting who need to be involved and
engaged in the planning process for their children. Despite
this belief, the participants shared the view that it was 'too
hard' to work with the immigrant families in this particular
setting because parents did not show enough interest and
language barriers were insurmountable. T2 explained:
Sometimes you try to talk to them and ask them how
their day has been and they just smile at you because
they have no idea what you're on about... some of
the families don't even turn up for parent-teacher
interviews and it makes me annoyed because we
spend so much time preparing all this stuff on their
child and they just don't bother ...it must be because
they can't speak English ...
Kiriakou (2001) has warned that w ith changing
demographics, teachers in Australia can no longer afford
to place issues of cross-cultural communication in the 'toohard
basket'.
Propositions
Three propositions emerged from the findings