Influence of structural features on Portuguese toddler child care quality
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty toddler child care classrooms from 15 private child care centers in the Metropolitan Area of Porto participated in this study. In the north of the country, Porto is the second largest city in Portugal: its Metropolitan Area has approximately 1,200,000 inhabitants (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, 2003).
Of the 15 participating centers, 11 were nonprofit and four were for-profit. Centers were randomly selected from a list provided by regional welfare services (which included a population
Results
Descriptive analysis examined the correlations between overall process quality (i.e., the overall ITERS score) and structural variables of conceptual interest (see Table 2). We found moderate statistically significant correlations between overall child care quality and teacher's salary (positive association) and teacher's age (negative association). Small nonsignificant correlations were found between child care quality and the following structural characteristics: space available per child
Discussion
Toddlers in the Metropolitan Area of Porto attend child care classrooms that, on average, do not have the basic health and safety requirements and do not provide the necessary materials to answer children’ developmental needs (for example, there are insufficient pretend play materials with few themes available; pictures and mobiles are insufficient, and usually displayed at adult eye level; few soft toys, etc.). In these classrooms, the care provided is inadequate and the quality of environment
Acknowledgements
This study is part of a research project titled The quality of child interactions in family and day care settings and its influence on children's socio-cognitive development developed by the Department of Psychology of the University of Porto and was supported by grants from the Foundation of Science and Technology (POCTI/PSI/35207/2000). The second author was supported by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (BD/8317/2002). Cecília Aguiar is now at UIPCDE, ISPA.
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