Abstract
Based on the knowledge that direct assessment of the quality of early childhood educational environments is becoming more and more important, this article deals with a coordinated adaptation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) in Germany and Portugal. The ECERS, developed by Harms and Clifford (1980), is a complex rating scale, comprising 37 items, which is implemented to assess major quality characteristics of early childhood classrooms and has been used quite extensively in the US as well as in other countries. In this article we describe how the scale was adapted and we report selected results of a jointly coordinated comparative study on a sample of 103 early childhood classrooms in Germany and 88 in Portugal. The classrooms were classified according to three different types in each country. In particular, we report the item characteristics of the adapted versions, reliabilities and intercorrelations of the total scale and the apriori-subscales, and results of factor analyses. A one-way ANOVA indicates group differences between the six types of classrooms which can be meaningfully interpreted.
Résumé
L'évaluation directe de la qualité éducative des contextes préscolaires (jardins d'enfants) revêt de nos jours une importance croissante. Cet article concerne une recherche concertée sur l'adaptation de la “Early Childhood Environment Rating Sacle” (ECERS) en Allemagne et au Portugal. La ECERS qui a été développée aux USA par Harms et Clifford (1980) est une échelle d'évaluation composite, de trente sept items, don't le but est d'évaluer les principales charactéristiques de la qualité des salles de jardins d'enfants. Cette échelle très répandue est maintenant utilisable au Portugal et en Allemagne.
Dans le présent article nous décrivons comment l'échelle a été adaptée et nous rapportons une étude comparative menée dans les duex pays avec une échantillon de 103 salles de jardins d'enfants en Allemagne et 88 au Portugal. Les salles ont été classées selon trois types de structures préscolaires existant dans les deux pays. Nous rapportons, en particulier, les caractéristiques des items des versions adaptées, les indices de fidélité (alpha de Cronbach) et les intercorrélations entre échelle totale et sous-échelles établies a priori. Une analyse factorielle a révélé deux facteurs, identiques dans les deux pays. Les résultats d'une ANOVA révèlent des différences entre six types de salles, cette typologie étant théoriquement interprétable.
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This study was made possible by a grant from the “Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie”/“Junta Nacional de Investigação Científica e Tecnológica”. It is part of a larger project, the European Child Care and Education Study (ECCE). This project was funded nationally by various sources. Participating universities in this project were the Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany (Wolfgang Tietze, Principal Investigator and ECCE Study Coordinator), the Universitaet Salzburg, Austria (Volker Krumm, Principal Investigator), the Universitaet Lueneburg (Hans-Guenther Rossbach, Principal Investigator), the Universidade do Porto, Portugal (Joaquim Bairrão, Principal Investigator), The Universidad de Sevilla, Spain (Jesus Palacios, Principal Investigator). Researchers contributing substantially to the project segment upon which this report is based include K.-M. Schuster, Isabel Macedo Pinto and Ana M. Gamelas.
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Tietze, W., Bairrão, J., Leal, T.B. et al. Assessing quality characteristics of center-based early childhood environments in Germany and Portugal: A cross-national study. Eur J Psychol Educ 13, 283–298 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173094
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173094