Leaders’ limitations and approaches to creating conditions for interaction and communication in parental groups: A qualitative study

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe and understand parental group (PG) leaders' experiences of creating conditions for interaction and communication. The data consisted of 10 interviews with 14 leaders. The transcribed interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. The results showed that the leaders' ambition was to create a parent-centred learning environment by establishing conditions for interaction and communication between the parents in the PGs. However, the leaders' experience was that their professional competencies were insufficient and that they lacked pedagogical tools to create constructive group discussions. Nevertheless, they found other ways to facilitate interactive processes. Based on their experience in the PG, the leaders constructed informal socio-emotional roles for themselves (e.g. caring role and personal role) and let their more formal task roles (e.g. professional role, group leader and consulting role) recede into the background, so as to remove the imbalance of power between the leaders and the parents. They believed this would make the parents feel more confident and make it easier for them to start communicating and interacting. This personal approach places them in a vulnerable position in the PG, in which it is easy for them to feel offended by parents' criticism, questioning or silence.

Cooperative learning in parental education groups – child healthcare nurses’ views on their work as leaders and on the groups

“…A possible explanation for this challenge may be found in an unawareness of one's leadership role. There is a lack of formal group leadership education in Bachelor/Master Education of Science in Nursing (Forslund Frykedal et al, 2019;Lefèvre et al, 2015) and instead the leaders need to develop their group leadership role at their workplace. Herbig and Bussing (2004) argued that knowledge acquired and developed implicitly in the workplace seems to be difficult to verbalize explicitly.…”

“…Studies of health professionals' views regarding parental groups have shown that they strongly believe in these groups as a support method (Lefèvre et al, 2015). There is an ambition to create parent-centered learning environments by establishing the conditions for interaction and communication between the parents (Forslund Frykedal, Rosander, Barimani, & Berlin, 2019). However, previous studies have shown that leaders often feel that they lack the pedagogical skills to be able to create well-functioning groups (Forslund Frykedal et al, 2019;Lefèvre et al, 2015).…”

“…There is an ambition to create parent-centered learning environments by establishing the conditions for interaction and communication between the parents (Forslund Frykedal, Rosander, Barimani, & Berlin, 2019). However, previous studies have shown that leaders often feel that they lack the pedagogical skills to be able to create well-functioning groups (Forslund Frykedal et al, 2019;Lefèvre et al, 2015). There is also often a discrepancy between what the leaders say they do and their actual behavior in the group.…”