Inclusive, Democratic Family-Professional Partnerships: (Re)Conceptualizing Culture and Language in Teacher Preparation

Family-professional partnerships are vital to the provision of appropriate and effective special education services for young children. Despite the recognized need, teacher educators in early childhood and early childhood special education have faced challenges in preparing their students to partner with families from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In this article, we assert that for pre-service early childhood/early childhood special education teachers to prepare for cross-cultural family-professional partnerships, teacher educators can take a democratic, inclusive perspective and address conceptualizations of culture and language. To this end, we first explain meanings of inclusive education and democratic partnerships. We then focus on conceptualizations of culture and language in developing cross-cultural partnerships. Finally, we provide recommendations to prepare pre-service teachers to form more democratic and inclusive cross-cultural partnerships with families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.