Child care program and teacher practices: associations with quality and children’s experiences

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Abstract

In this research, we identified teacher and program practices in child care programs designed to serve low-income children and families of color and examined associations among these articulated practices, quality, and observed child behaviors. Two hundred and sixty children (50% girls) and 80 teachers from 22 programs in Los Angeles and rural North Carolina participated in this research. There were positive associations between teacher articulated and program practices and these practices could be reduced through principle component analysis into four meaningful groups of practices: (1) Positive Relations; (2) Family Services and Schooling in English; (3) Basic Education and Good Care with a Community Focus; and (4) School Preparation. There were modest associations between articulated practices and classroom quality. As well, ethnic differences were found in practices articulated by the teachers and programs, suggesting that practices are both related to quality yet rooted within ethnic communities. When used together to represent the child’s social surrounding, both ethnicity and quality were significant contributors to our model predicting children’s experiences in child care. Teacher and child ethnicity, teacher and program practices, and classroom quality made modest significant contributions to the prediction of children’s experiences in child care classrooms. Children’s competent peer behaviors as well as their participation in learning activities could be significantly predicted by at least one of the following constructs: teacher and child ethnicity, articulated practices, and classroom quality.

Introduction

Child care programs, while differing in educational philosophies and purpose, generally intend to provide activities that the program believes will promote children’s cognitive and social development. In order to act on these intentions, programs and teachers have strategies or “practices” that they believe will further their goals. We are using a definition of practices rooted in sociocultural and ecocultural theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, Gallimore & Goldenberg, 1993). Within this theoretical traditions practices are “ways of doing things” or ingrained habits rooted in participants beliefs, expectations, traditions, and relations. Our particular focus is on the practices that early childhood programs, their directors, and teachers intend to and actually do use to enhance children’s development and to manage and sustain their program. To understand how these practices influence children’s daily experiences in child care, it is necessary to take a practice focused perspective. While a practice focused perspective requires a different approach to studying children in early childhood programs than has dominated the literature so far, it may help practitioners shape developmentally enhancing early childhood programs by focusing on the specific ideas about practices that guide how teachers and programs work with children.

The primary purposes of this research were to identify practices articulated by programs and teachers, to examine whether and how articulated practices vary by ethnicity, to examine associations between child care practices and child care quality, and to examine how both practices and quality influence children’s experiences in child care. While this research is primarily exploratory in nature, we expect that both quality and practices as separate constructs will be important predictors of children’s experiences in child care. A distinction between quality and practices is a relatively new one for child care researchers, as the construct of practices is drawn from elementary education rather than child development. We suspect, however, that as accountability for preparing children for school is increasing in early childhood programs, there will be an increasing interest in practices as well as quality.

As the practices that programs and teachers use in enhancing children’s development vary widely, a concise definition of “practices” is not generally agreed upon. Because practices are ingrained habits within institutions, in this case early childhood programs, teachers and directors who have spent years within the institution may not be easily able to articulate their practices. Practices have become natural ways of doing things, particularly within early childhood programs that have institutionalized mentoring. Practices are the particular strategies that child care programs and teachers intend to and actually do use to enhance children’s development. Examples of practices include reading to children with the intention of helping them to be ready to enter school with pre-academic skills, or assigning children to specific caregivers with the intention of building more trusting relationships. Practices are about what to teach as well as how to teach. They are intentional strategies used to achieve an adult goal whether the goal is to have children be in quiet lines going to the bathroom, to have all the children recognize 10 letters, or to bolster self-confidence.

Practices can be articulated as isolated particular ways of doing things, for example single sex versus both sex lines for transitions from inside to outside, but our theoretical frame suggests that isolating particular practices from the pattern of practices and from the cultural context of the practice reduces the meaningfulness of the practice (Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002; Rogoff et al., 1993, Rogoff et al., 1996). Therefore, we focus on patterns of individual practices rather than isolating variables responsible for the observed patterns. To continue our example, the practice of how children are arranged in lines may or may not fit into a larger pattern of practices about gender. For instance, lines organized by gender could be as simple as a practical way of accomplishing a routine activity or be part of a larger philosophy about gender socialization.

In contrast to research on practices, it is well established in the research literature that quality child care is crucial to the social and cognitive development of a child (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). The features of quality child care that are associated with more optimal developmental outcomes include both structural dimensions, for example, the number of children cared for by each adult, and process dimensions, for example, safe and stimulating environment, and warm, nurturing, and responsive interactions amongst adults, caregivers and other children (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).

While most parents and child care providers agree on core definitions of child care quality, there is less agreement over what constitutes “best practices.” For example, some parents and providers believe that young children should select their own play activities, while others advocate a more structured approach to early learning. Practices, more than quality, appear to be deeply embedded within value and belief systems that are rooted in ethnicity, community, and social class (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Programs of similar quality ratings often emphasize different practices according to the goals and values of their community. For example, programs that emphasize individual needs over collective experiences or child initiated learning over didactic learning have been criticized as not reflecting the values and beliefs of other than affluent, White culture (Kessler & Swadener, 1992).

In order to examine distinctions between quality and practices, and to investigate how practices are embedded in ethnicity and social class, we use a theoretical framework that places children’s development within components of practices and quality, and further within ethnic and social class contexts (Howes, 2000, see Fig. 1). This framework draws from ecocultural/ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, Gallimore & Goldenberg, 1993) in which individual development is nested within the broader “sociocultural system” and from more recent work that interprets the development of all children within a cultural context (Garcı́a Coll et al., 1996). These theories include the notion of development as a continuum born in the everyday routines of children, with these routines varying both across as well as within cultural and linguistic communities. In this model, daily routines are considered an adaptive problem that all families from all cultures confront and are organized and maintained to accomplish specific tasks that support the larger cultural values of the community. Daily routines are widely variant as they are determined and maintained by the specific needs and cultural values of the family niche and are indirectly influenced by the distal features of the environment, such as neighborhood safety and family SES, that shape the nature of the activities within the immediate environment (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 1993, Heath, 1982; Reese, Garnier, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 2000).

The current model draws from an ecocultural understanding of development by including an analysis of the types of activities that children are engaging in, the emotional and physical quality of the environment, and the overarching goals that organize these daily activities. Thus, key elements to consider are not only in which activities children engage while at child care, but also who participates (personnel) in these activities, how the activities are organized (the organizing scripts and relational quality), and what are the goals of the activities (the meaning). In this model, we consider teacher and program practices as the daily habits or routines, guided by scripts, that are organized to accomplish specific goals, values, or needs. On the teacher level, these practices represent the teacher’s cultural schema concerning the functions and processes of child care. These practices include notions about how and what children should be taught. On the program level, these practices include broader notions concerning the overall role that child care plays in the lives of children, families, and communities. Taking a practice-focused perspective is one step towards capturing the role of culture and ethnicity in shaping children’s experiences and development. Across different cultural communities both the types of activities and the meaning attributed to these activities vary according to the socialization practices and values of that community. Thus, while children from two different communities may engage in similar activities, the meaning behind such activities might be quite different and consequently lead to differences in development (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 1993).

An important distinction between the developmental models presented by Gallimore and Goldenberg (1993), Bronfenbrenner (1979) and Garcı́a Coll et al. (1996) and the Howes’ (2000) framework presented in the present study is the centrality of relationships in the understanding of development. Children’s development does not occur outside of relationships; rather they occur along side each other. This model is bi-directional in that each level is assumed to influence the adjacent one. In our current work, we define all levels in the Howes’ framework to be specific to child care discourse and to our interest in the distinction between child care practices and child care quality. To address practices particular to ethnic and cultural communities, we limited the interpretation of the model to center-based child care programs serving primarily low income children of color. The specific constructs included in the Howes’ framework are illustrated in Fig. 1.

The following explanation and discussion of the theoretical framework presented in this study includes definitions and clarifications of specific terms and phrases used throughout the article.

At the center of the figure is the child. In this study, we described children’s development by observing their experiences in the classroom with play activities, their play with other children, and their relationships with the teacher. There is a rich and substantial body of literature that supports the belief that children’s play activities in child care are some of the most important experiences that promote social and cognitive development (Howes & Smith, 1995). Piagetian theory holds that children’s social and cognitive development results directly from their interactive play with objects, such as blocks to promote creativity and manipulatives to promote fine motor skills (Ginsburg & Opper, 1998). Further, Vygotsky (1978) holds that it is not merely the interaction between the child and the object that promotes cognitive development, but rather the interaction between the child and the adult in conjunction with the object at hand. Accordingly, children’s play activities are often considered important and necessary for social and cognitive development.

The second component of children’s experiences included in this model revolves around peers. For many children, the child care classroom is their primary context for developing ways to engage with peers. Children must share classroom teachers and materials with other children. If they want to play, they need to know how to ask another child to play with them, how to include (or not) just the right number of children in their game, how to agree on a script for the play, how to maintain play, and how to resolve conflicts and conflicting interests. For example, the block corner can be a wonderful place to pretend to be a train conductor with a fast train that has a wreck, but only if you can persuade others to be the passengers, agree that there is to be a wreck, and perhaps designate someone to be the “fixer” when the train breaks down. Children, as a matter of course, develop more and less competent solutions to these dilemmas. Thus, children’s complexity of play with peers is an important component of children’s social and cognitive development.

The third component of children’s experiences included in this model represents those people with whom children form relationships. For purposes of this study, those attachment figures are teachers. Dominant American culture has long drawn this diagram another way, with a circle enclosing the child designated either as the mother or the family and then the outer circle designated as, perhaps, child care and school or peers (Howes, 2000). This model deliberately describes a network of primary relationships instead of a model that nests the family within child care and peers. Families outside of the dominant culture (particularly people of color, immigrant families, and families living in or close to poverty) have historically used a variety of child-rearing configurations involving networks of caregiving adults rather than a single caregiver (Jackson, 1993). In order to understand children’s social development, it is important to consider a network of relationships, rather than to focus only on the mother–child relationship (Howes, 2000).

The second circle in Fig. 1 indicates the particular social contexts of the child. The most important social contexts in this developmental period are the family and the child care arrangement used by the family (Howes, 2000). In this study, however, we are focusing on the child care setting. Variations that we deem important in the child care social context include practices of programs, teachers, and various dimensions of quality.

Practices of programs include their curriculum and their goals. Preschool program curricula, particularly for underrepresented children, have been found to be a critical factor in determining social and cognitive development (Weikart & Schweinhart, 1991). Indeed, in one study, Weikart and Schweinhart (1991) found that for disadvantaged students a developmentally appropriate preschool curriculum appeared to be positively associated with positive social school adjustment at 15 years old. Program curriculum varies widely such that many child care programs are based on a very specific curriculum with specific, stated developmental (both social and cognitive) goals, while many others are based on a looser, unstated curriculum with wider goals.

In this study, we used program goals that embody the intent or mission of the program to define practices at the program level. While previous studies have found that program goals significantly influence children’s social play behavior (Wintre, 1989), this line of research has not been extended to include the influence of program goals on the more general experiences of children in child care programs. In asking about the goals of programs, we found that some endorsed goals only for children (e.g., get them ready for school), while others included goals for parents (e.g., make them better parents), and others included goals for whole communities (e.g., improve the lives of the people in this neighborhood). Other program goals included program-endorsed practices used to counteract high turnover rates of teachers and philosophies about working with families.

We also examined practices articulated by teachers within programs. Teacher articulated practices included, for example, thinking about teaching math and reading or whether relationship-based classroom management practices were to be used. We believed that it was important to understand how teachers as well as programs articulated their practices. Unfortunately, previous work has found that many preschool teachers within the same school do not agree on the program objectives and cannot explain the educational philosophy that guides the curriculum (Vedder & Bouwer, 1996). However, how teachers understand their own practices appears to guide their behavior in the classroom (Nespor, 1987). For example, in a study of preschool teachers’ beliefs and classroom atmosphere, researchers found that teachers with “concrete” belief systems developed simple and highly structured environments for the children, were less tolerant, reacted strongly to misbehavior, and were more punitive to such deviation (Harvey, White, Prather, Alter, & Hoffmeister, 1966). Teachers with “abstract” belief systems were more accepting of children’s wishes and needs, encouraged individual responsibility, and had less need for structure. Other studies have also found that teachers’ belief systems indeed matched their observed behavior (Charlesworth, Hart, Burts, & Hernandez, 1991; Kagan & Smith, 1988, Smith & Shepard, 1988, Stipek & Byler, 1997; Stipek, Daniels, Galluzzo, & Milburn, 1992). In order to tap into teachers’ beliefs about practice, we conducted unstructured interviews asking teachers to describe what they did in their programs and why.

The child care environment is another important dimension of the child care social context. We derive our construct of quality from the child care research tradition (Lamb, 1998). Quality is defined as the physical and emotional environment provided for children, where the primary attention is paid to global issues of relationships and environmental provisions for learning. The specific dimensions of quality we used include the emotional climate of the classroom, teacher behaviors (involvement and engagement with the children), and environmental quality. We included both the emotional climate of the classroom and teacher behaviors because a growing body of research drawn from attachment theory and empirical research on child–teacher relationships (Howes, 1999) suggests that the particular nature of children’s social interactions with their primary caregivers and the emotional climate of these interactions (Boyce et al., 1998, Cassidy & Shaver, 1999) influence the nature of their peer–peer and child–teacher relationships. Children who have warm, responsive, and individualized interactions with teachers in the context of a harmonious classroom emotional climate are more likely to engage in competent behavior with peers and form secure attachment relationships with their teachers. We included environmental quality because of the well-documented associations between environmental quality and children’s concurrent and long-term social and cognitive development (Lamb, 1998).

The third circle in Fig. 1 represents ethnic communities and culture as understood and enacted by the child’s primary caregivers. A basic assumption in this study is that individual primary developmental processes (e.g., the formation of attachment relationships or the construction of social pretend-play sequences) operate similarly for minority children as for children in the dominant culture. That is, warm, sensitive, and positive reciprocal interactions are expected to be associated with social competence in children of color as well as in White children.

However, there are some differences in the way culture influences other constructs relevant to a child’s development; hence, we include ethnic communities/culture as a sphere of influence. First, there are cultural differences in social interaction style. Therefore, the particular patterning of individual behaviors in a responsive and reciprocal interaction may be different in adult–child pairings from different cultural backgrounds (Howes, 2000, Howes & James, in press). Second, the pervasive influence of racism, prejudice, and discrimination in American society means that families of color have developed an adaptive culture (Garcı́a Coll et al., 1996). Adaptive culture is a group of goals, values, attitudes, and behaviors that set families and children of color apart from the dominant culture. Both the adaptive culture and the dominant culture influence the social context of a child’s development.

We are particularly concerned about the experiences available to young children from diverse populations. Therefore, we began this study by focusing on community-nominated programs noted for their excellence in serving low-income children of color. As we engaged with these programs a surprising diversity of goals and practices emerged. It should be noted that the full sample of programs, teachers, and children included in this research also included a second set of programs similar to our community-nominated programs in the children and families served and the neighborhood locations of the program. However, the second set of programs was dissimilar in that they were not nominated as exemplary, and they self-identified as struggling with issues of practices and quality.

The conceptual framework presented in this study shaped our hypotheses and analytic strategy as we examined associations between child care practices and child care quality, and how both practices and quality influence children’s experiences in child care. Our first research question was to determine whether we could meaningfully identify, define, and describe practices articulated by teachers and programs serving low-income children of color. Our second research question was to examine associations between articulated practices and quality. Our third research question examined ethnic differences in the articulated practices experienced by children. In our fourth research question, we examined associations between levels of the models to predict children’s experiences in child care.

The current analysis differs from the research examining relations between instruction and achievement in low-income children of color in that we examined relations between children’s actual experiences and program practices. It differs from the prior research investigating the association between program practices and children’s classroom experiences because this past research has, by in large, been conducted with affluent White children (Wintre, 1989).

Section snippets

Early childhood programs

We used two samples of early childhood programs in this analysis: the Best Practices Programs and the Partnership Programs. We used different strategies to recruit the programs and children studied in the two samples.

Articulated practices

Our first research question was to meaningfully identify, define, and describe teacher articulated and program practices.

Discussion

Using participant observation, clinical interviews, and focus groups we were able to identify diverse early childhood practices at the individual program and teacher level. These practices varied across programs and teachers. These articulated practices were significantly related to quality and varied by teacher–child ethnic pairings. The combination of ethnicity, practices, and quality significantly predicted children’s learning experiences and peer play competency in child care. Because

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants to the National Center for Early Development and Learning under the Educational Research and Development Centers Program, PR/Award Number R307A60004, as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, US Department of Education. We wish to acknowledge the participation and time of the programs, teachers, and children who allowed us to record their actions, words, and practices. We would also like to thank the research assistants and project

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