The collaboration between school and home is one of the key areas of discussion in every educational institution. Both professionals and parents today are aware of the importance of successful partnership and its positive effects on a child's development. The establishment of a partnership is influenced not only by numerous objective and subjective factors but also by the teacher's competences. These competences are expected to be developed to some extent during teacher training. The results of various research studies and analyses of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programs at all three pedagogical faculties in Slovenia indicate a lack of content aimed at developing future teachers' competences for collaborating with parents. This deficiency served as the basis for our quantitative research, in which 113 teachers participated. These teachers were enrolled in the primary education program at one of the Slovenian pedagogical faculties and had up to three years of teaching experience at the time of the study. The research aimed to explore the experiences and attitudes of novice teachers regarding collaboration with parents. It sought to determine the importance novice teachers attributed to specific competences for working with parents, evaluate their own competence in these areas, and assess to what extent, if at all, they had the opportunity to develop these competences during their primary education studies. The results of the research indicated that novice teachers, on average, more frequently engage with parents in formal rather than informal ways. They perceive formal collaboration as more effective in establishing partnership with parents compared to informal methods. The results also showed that novice teachers are aware of the importance of collaboration and its impact on students, parents, and teachers. In their interactions with parents, they value maintaining a professional distance, yet they exhibit a more negative attitude towards subjective theories that may act as barriers to collaboration and often conflict with theory and best practices. Furthermore, the results revealed that novice teachers highly rated communication, counselling, organizational, and leadership competences in the context of building relationships with parents. In self-assessing their competence, they gave the highest ratings to organizational and communication skills, and slightly lower ratings to counselling and leadership skills. More than half of the surveyed teachers believed they were qualified for collaboration with parents. However, the results indicated that teachers felt they had insufficient opportunities during their university education to develop all the mentioned competences for collaboration with parents. The area that stood out the most negatively was the leadership of various meetings with parents. The research results serve as important feedback on the adequacy of the design of education for future primary school teachers regarding preparation for collaboration with parents and they encourage reflection on possible revisions to the education program.
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