An Evaluation of a Workshops-based Intervention Designed to Develop the Confidence of Women Students in Managing Communications With Parents and Carers

The demographic comprising Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) students remains highly gendered. Evidence suggests that women educators may have lower levels of perceived self-efficacy than their male counterparts. This small-scale research project aimed to evaluate the impact of workshops co-constructed with undergraduate women. The workshops aimed to support their developing confidence in managing communications with parents and carers of children in ECEC. The UK’s QAA (2014) benchmarks for Early Childhood Studies degrees require students to act as advocates for children, their parents and families but initial findings suggested that students lacked confidence in their abilities to do this, even avoiding opportunities where they arose.
The research adopted a social constructivist, feminist perspective. Qualitative methods were employed to collect, analyse and evaluate findings. The findings supported the notion of the affective as a potential barrier to learning. It is contended that such a barrier might be mitigated by learning and teaching strategies which acknowledge explicitly socio-cultural, structural and affective barriers to the advancement of women and girls and their potential effect on confidence and perception of self-efficacy. This is particularly pertinent to courses which comprise almost all women students many of whom will contribute to future generations’ education of women and girls.