Press Release

CECED organizes lecture ensuring parents role to support

learning at home
New Delhi, 22 November: To converse about the appropriate approaches and
policies regarding Early Childhood Education, Centre for Early Childhood
Education and Development (CECED) organized a special lecture by Prof Kathy
Sylva at India International Centre, New Delhi. The lecture titled Teaching Parents
of Preschool Children to Support Learning at Home aimed to highlight the
involvement and contributions of parents in the early years of their children.
Along with Professor Kathy Sylva from the Department of Education, Oxford
University, CECED members and several invited experts shared some deep-
seatedthoughts on Early Childhood Education and Development. The fact based
studies on early education haveidentified and asserted an association
betweenparental engagement and children'slater academic achievement at
school. It is suggestedby Prof Sylva that learning activities at home involving
parents and children strengthens and ensuresoverall development of the child
and better academic results. It therefore becomes apparent and important to
induce parents to training aimed at enhancing the home learningenvironments of
preschool children.

Talking about two intervention studies in her special lecture, Prof. Kathy Sylva
talked elaborately on the importance of home learning environment and shared
some insights about the use of a parent app in England and its impact on the
development of children.

This lecture has focused upon two interventionsthat are designed for
incorporating parental skills related to enhance learning at early childhood level
and thus to augment this wakefulness. One features an app sent to parents
phones with short film clips of parents playing games with their children aimed at
increasing concentration. The other is a series of workshops and resources
offered to parents, designed to make home learningactivities helpful and
enjoyable. The future directions for ECED research were recommended along
with the discussions about the limitations of these studies in the country.

If our endpoint is that we want outcomes in children, we want them to have the
joy of learning. Then, we must through whatever process we are taking them
through, and this applies to both teachers and children, we need to be able to
demonstrate how that impact is there on children. This is the most convincing
way of getting people, whether it is teachers or parents to be really convinced
with something if we can show it with the children. So that demonstration is very
keen said Prof. VenitaKaul, Founding Director, CECED, Ambedkar University Delhi
who was also the Chair for the lecture session.

About CECED, Ambedkar University Delhi

CECED was established as a constituent of Ambedkar UniversityDelhi in 2009 to

promote research, advocacy and quality in the field of early childhood education
and development. Its mission is to contribute towards the national goals of social
justice and equity by promoting developmentally and contextually appropriate
early childhood care and education (ECCE) as every childs right to a sound
foundation and raising ECCE in the forefront of policy formulation and effective
universal program implementation.