The Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care Services in Australia

Abstract

THIS PAPER REPORTS CONCLUSIONS about the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services from E4Kids, a large-scale longitudinal study of three types of ECEC services in two Australian states. A little more than 250 preschool classrooms had complete data in 2010; two measures of ECEC quality were applied-the CLASS and selected subscales of the ECERS-R. Overall, Australian ECEC averaged in the medium range on most measured components of quality, with the exception of personal care routines and instructional support. We found evidence that average quality in ECEC in the E4Kids study varies systematically across the type of service, with kindergartens having significantly higher quality than long day care centres. Australian ECEC quality was found to be broadly similar to that in the United States and United Kingdom: slightly weaker in terms of the developmental appropriateness of classroom practices assessed through ECERS-R, slightly stronger than the United States in the areas of classroom organisation and instructional support.

Quality Interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care Center Outdoor Environments

“…In this CLASS Pre-K study of the outdoor environment, the emotional support domain achieved the highest scores, and the instructional support domain achieved the lowest scores, a finding that is consistent with other CLASS Pre-K studies of indoor learning environments (Curby et al 2010;LaParo et al 2004;Sandilos and DiPerna 2011;Tayler et al 2013). This outcome may be a reflection of an ECEC environment where children's social and emotional wellbeing is paramount and valued as being more crucial for learning and development than academic achievement.…”

“…The overall scores from CLASS Pre-K in this study indicate that the emotional support and classroom organization domains are in a high range of interaction quality, and that the instructional support domain is in the medium range. These ranges are higher than in other studies using CLASS Pre-K. For example, in other studies the mean scores for the emotional support and classroom organization domains were in the medium range, and the mean Instructional Support scores were in the low-medium range (Tayler et al 2013;Sandilos and DiPerna 2011). Conversely, a study in Finland using CLASS (Pakarinen et al 2010) found similar patterns to the current study with higher ranges reported.…”

“…For example, validation studies (Downer et al 2010;Pakarinen et al 2010) or studies that have compared CLASS Pre-K with others instruments that assess quality (LaParo et al 2004) or studies that assess the stability of interactions during the day (Curby et al 2010). A few studies have focused on relationships between CLASS Pre-K and outcomes such as educational wellbeing and social development (Burchinal et al 2008;Curby et al 2009;Tayler et al 2016) or assessed the relationship between CLASS Pre-K scores and service type (Tayler et al 2013). These studies consistently found that higher quality interactions resulted in improved outcomes for children.…”

Structural characteristics and process quality in early childhood education and care

“…ECEC quality is a multidimensional concept and broadly defined aims at promoting children's well-being and positive developmental outcomes (Layzer and Goodson, 2006 [1] ). A common distinction is made between structural characteristics, process quality and staff's beliefs (Howes et al, 2008 [2] ; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2002 [3] ; Pianta et al, 2005 [4] ; Sylva et al, 2006 [5] ; Thomason and La Paro, 2009 [6] ). Structural quality entails the distal and regulable factors, such as child-staff ratios, group size and staff training/education (Abbott-Shim, Lambert and McCarty, 2000 [7] ; Burchinal et al, 2010 [8] ; Barros et al, 2016 [9] ; Howes et al, 2008 [2] ; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000 [10] ; Thomason and La Paro, 2009 [6] ).…”

Integrating Health and Educational Perspectives to Promote Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Learning: Development of a Multi-Faceted Program Using an Intervention Mapping Approach

“…ECEC services across Australia are diverse, with educators from varied educational backgrounds, with a range of qualifications, professional learning, and experiences. Early learning programs contrast in terms of their overall quality [84] and educators work with children and families with unique strengths and challenges [85,86]. The comprehensive nature of the needs assessment in Step 1 assisted the intervention design group to define program goals.…”