This study examined Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers’ attitudes towards different types of parental involvement strategies and investigated whether these attitudes were related to the quality of relationships within their own family.
Data were collected by the authors from 163 Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers via questionnaire.
Results showed that engaging families in school decisions was perceived as the least important and feasible.
The pre-service teachers also felt least confident in implementing it.
There were, however, discrepancies in the perceived levels of importance, feasibility and confidence towards other types of parental involvement strategies.
The levels of cohesion and expressiveness in pre-service teachers’ own families were positively related to their attitudes towards some types of parental involvement strategies.
These findings suggest that teacher educators should take pre-service teachers’ family experiences into consideration when preparing them to work with children’s families.