Engage with families to support children’s learning and development
Overview
Family engagement is important throughout early childhood education and care. There is a great deal of evidence that families play a critical role in their child’s learning and development.
Early Years Learning Framework Principle 2
Working in partnership with families, educators use the Learning Outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework to guide their planning for children’s learning.
National Quality Standard Area 6
Quality Area 6 recognises (among other things) that collaborative relationships with families are fundamental to achieving quality outcomes for children.
Research
AERO has produced practice guides on this topic, tailored to different contexts.

Early childhood education and care practice guide
This guide makes recommendations based on the best available research evidence about how early childhood services with 3-5 year-olds can engage with families to enhance children’s early learning and development.

Annotated reference list
An overview of the research evidence cited throughout our family engagement practice resources.

Brief methodology
This explainer describes the process we followed to synthesise the available research evidence on family engagement to create the family engagement practice guides.

Detailed methodology
This detailed methodology describes the processes we followed to synthesise the available research evidence on family engagement for learning.