Decision-Making by Families and Home Visitors During Early Head Start Home Visits

Abstract

Early Head Start policies describe parents as partners in decision-making and require families and home visitors to co-develop child and family goals. Home visitors face a range of challenges when facilitating decisions about goals and other issues, which requires interactional skills to apply institutional resources and policies to individual circumstances. Further, decision-making is embedded in ideological contexts, and societal norms regarding education and families contribute to decisions. Yet, research examining nuances of decision-making is limited, and no identified studies engaged home visitors in reflection on decision-making. Thus, the purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to better understand how interactional, institutional, and ideological factors contribute to decision-making by home visitors and parents during Early Head Start home visits, and (2) to foster home visitor reflection on decision-making. Framed by sociocultural and discourse theory, this study implemented a component mixed methods design to investigate how four home visitors and 12 families made decisions about child and family needs, and how home visitors reflected on decision-making discourse. Data sources included audio-video recordings of home visits, home visit paperwork, and interviews with home visitors and parents. Decision-making discourse was investigated through qualitative (i.e., discourse analysis) and quantitative analysis (i.e., utterance count descriptive statistics) of home visit transcripts, and qualitative analysis of home visit paperwork and interview transcripts. Home visitors and the researcher co-analyzed audio-video recordings of home visit discourse; home visitor reflection was investigated through qualitative analysis of interview transcripts. Identified decision-making sequences (n = 215) addressed future actions regarding children, families, and Early Head Start events, and variations in decision-making structures were found across these decision types. In addition, variations were identified when decisions were institutional (i.e., linked to program requirements and paperwork) or emergent (i.e., linked to current or past observations). Despite such variations, the typical decision-making trajectory was as follows: (1) home visitor initiates assessment, (2) home visitor and parent assess progress or needs, (3) home visitor or parent introduces decision point, (4) parent accepts, resists, or reports decision, and (5) home visitor concludes decision-making sequence. Regardless of decision content or whether parents or home visitors initiated decision-making, the predominant pattern was for parents and home visitors to discuss a single strategy, rather than address multiple options. Thus, parent participation in decision-making was primarily characterized by accepting, resisting, or reporting decisions. In addition, decision-making tended to involve identification of a strategy rather than individualization of a strategy to specific child or family needs. As such, parents and home visitors did not typically exchange their unique knowledge to reach mutual decisions. In collaboration with the researcher, home visitors explored features of decision-making discourse, including features of words spoken, actions taken through language, and identities constructed through language (Gee, 2014). Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed. By investigating nuances of what was said by whom, how it was said, and in what context, this study contributes new information regarding details of parent-home visitor decision-making.