Early childhood teachers' perspectives on parents' respect for the rights of young children and education for parents on young children’s rights

The purpose of this study was to explore early childhood teachers’ perspectives on parents’ respect for the rights of young children, as well as the reasons why rights education for parents is necessary and what content it should include. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted with ten in-service early childhood teachers, and the data were analyzed based on Glesne’s (2016/2017) thematic analysis method. The findings were as follows. First, teachers perceived that the rights of young children were not sufficiently respected at home due to ‘infringement on the right to development caused by excessive private education’, ‘weakening of the right to participation due to restricted autonomy’, and ‘weakening of the right to protection due to situational constraints’. Second, teachers emphasized that rights education for parents is needed to ‘promote understanding of the rights of young children’ and to ‘strengthen the practice of respecting these rights’. Third, the teachers suggested that rights education for parents should include content such as ‘recognizing young children as independent individuals’, ‘establishing standards for child-rearing’, ‘respecting children’s opinions’, and ‘fostering attitudes that respect and consider the rights of others’. This study is significant in that it identified how early childhood teachers perceive parents’ respect for the rights of young children and derived foundational data for the development of rights education programs for parents.