Interaction between staff of a multicultural daycare and immigrant families

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the challenges faced by multicultural staff in interacting with immigrant families. The study used a qualitative research approach; semi and unstructured interviews to collect data. The participants were selected by the manager of the multicultural daycare based on their English language skills and also on their different experiences working with immigrant families. Five staffs were interviewed and the data that was collected from the interviews was analyzed through content analyzes. The questions that were asked in the interviews were to search for answers to the research question: what are the challenges faced by multicultural staff in interacting with immigrant families.

The findings of this study revealed that staffs of multicultural daycare do face a lot of challenges working with immigrant families. The findings reflected the various ways in which staffs use to interact with immigrant families; visual communication, social interactions, the use of translators and academic interactions were the main issues pointed out.

The study concluded that the city of Espoo should recruit and train staffs with immigrant backgrounds and train them for at least two years, so that they could work in multicultural daycare. This would help to overcome the challenges of interaction in schools and daycare centers. This should be treated as a matter of urgency because the immigrant population in Finland is growing rapidly and children are leaving daycare every year to primary school.