Preparing pre-service teachers for home-school cooperation: exploring Finnish teacher education programmes

Cooperation between home and school benefits pupils' wellbeing in many ways. Hence, it is of utmost importance that teachers are able to cooperate with families in early childhood education as well as in primary and secondary education. In order to work effectively with the diversity of families, teachers need to develop their skills and knowledge while in teacher education programmes. Earlier research has suggested that teacher education programmes do not address this issue adequately. In this article, programme managers in Finnish teacher education programmes are asked to reflect on how cooperation is covered in their programmes. Based on the data, collected through an online survey, home-school cooperation can be considered an integral part of teacher training: most of the programmes surveyed offered modules that concentrated either solely on the issue or as part of other modules. Cooperation was also discussed from various perspectives during the modules. Respondents considered their graduates to be either competent or somewhat competent to cooperate with families. According to programme managers, modules should be developed in relation to strengthening the theoretical basis of cooperation, and especially in enabling pre-service teachers to practise their skills in cooperation while they are having their practical training at schools.