T.E.P.E. Training Institute

T.E.P.E. Training Institute

Parenting Education Background

Parenting Education has been around in one form or another for 200 years. What began in the 1800's as an assist to immigrant families in settlement houses, has come to mean an entire range of services, which aim to deliver thoughtful, planned supports that are available to parents and families across the country, even the world.

According to one estimate parenting or family-life education is a complex, multi-disciplinary enterprise which employs, in this country alone, an estimated 200,000 workers (Carter, 1996.) As a vocation it embraces information and theoretical knowledge from four separate and distinct fields including education, mental health, medicine, and human services (Carter, 1996). The sheer breadth of this knowledge base contrasted against the differences among individual parents and their offspring, each with separate temperaments and ages, combine to make the task of teaching parenting education a tremendous challenge.

Contrasted against these unique individual factors is the issue of social change. As developmentalist Urie Bronfenbrenner demonstrated each of us exits within a individual context of family, friends, neighborhood and country, all set within a socio-historical framework. Not only is that framework changing but it is evolving at breakneck speed. Ultimately, even if change is for all the right reasons, it is still a de-stabilizing factor in our lives. This is especially true for those who seek to support and educate families.

Contemporary Issues

While the field of parenting and family life education has expanded tremendously over the last twenty years there is little agreement among practitioners or programs as to the core knowledge base, the credentials necessary to act as a parenting educator, or the choice of curricula. Due in large part to this lack of consensus researcher Nick Carter described parenting education as “a verdant tree with a large spread of branches and leaves that is threatened by a less visible but critically shallow root system.” This is why T.E.P.E. Training Institute was formed.

T.E.P.E. Training Institute has been created to provide the practitioner and the agencies that employ parenting and family life educators, with training, knowledge, and resources to help make this enormous undertaking more manageable. T.E.P.E. is focused on its efforts to heighten and improve pre-service and in-service training. We are also contributing to the development of a collegial infrastructure, or network, throughout the Northeast, and in all that we do we endeavor to enhance self-discipline and promote the standards that will propel this vocation to the next plateau of service to support, strengthen and educate families across America.