Willingness to learn and ability to benefit from instruction
According to a recent survey, 58% of children ages 5 and under are in non-parental arrangements on a regular basis, including child care centers, Head Start, kinship care, family day care homes, and nanny care. Child care becomes especially common in the later preschool years, when 76% of 4-year-olds and 83% of 5-year-olds are in some form of non-parental care. However, several recent studies have suggested that the quality of this care is highly variable. Structural adjustable features are aspects of child care settings, such as group size, child-to-adult ratio, caregiver education, and caregiver training that may be subject to regulation by communities or states. Child care processes are the experiences children have in child care settings, including interactions with caregivers and peers and opportunities to participate in different activities.
In a recent comprehensive review of child care research published last year, we examined numerous studies examining relationships between process measures of child care quality and child developmental outcomes. Regarding child care, we conclude that high-quality day care clearly has positive effects on children’s intellectual, verbal, and cognitive development, especially when children would experience impoverished and relatively unstimulating home environments. Care of unknown quality can have harmful effects. Regarding the care of older preschool children, we conclude that presumably high-quality center-based day care can have positive effects on children’s intellectual development, regardless of family background, and does not appear to have negative effects in any group of children. . Structural tunable features of child care settings have been shown to be associated with children’s academic, cognitive, behavioral, and social development. Some of the strongest associations in the child care literature are those between adjustable structural features and process quality.
Recent research provides strong indications that the quality of child care, both in terms of structural and process adjustment, has significant and positive effects on children’s cognitive development, language skills, social competence, behavioral adjustment, and work habits. children. Each of these indicators of adjustment plays a role in children’s readiness to learn and ability to benefit from instruction. In addition, recent longitudinal research demonstrates that the quality of child care during the infancy and preschool years continues to have positive effects on children’s success in school and academic progress in the early years of elementary school. One of the challenges for future research is further consideration of the effects of child care quality over time along with the quality of school classroom environments that children experience after child care. Another challenge for future research is to test a mediation model of the influence of components of child care quality on child development. Adjustable structural factors are likely to exert their influence in altering the quality of care provided to children. A full mediation model needs to be tested, the results of which may allow us to draw firm conclusions about how best to improve the quality of child care so that all children can benefit from developing their experiences in these settings. Given the knowledge that is available right now, child care programs should strive to meet recommendations from organizations like the American Public Health Association. These guidelines include a child-to-staff ratio of 3:1 in infant/toddler classrooms and 6:1 in preschool classrooms, and maximum group sizes of six children in infant/toddler classrooms and 14 children in preschool classrooms.