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The Sydney eScholarship Repository >
Sydney University Press >
Kids Count: Better early childhood education and care in Australia >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2147
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| Title: | The determinants of quality care: review and research report |
| Authors: | Sims, Margaret
Hill, Elizabeth
Pocock, Barbara
Elliott, Alison |
| Keywords: | Early childhood education -- Australia.
Child care -- Australia. |
| Issue Date: | 2007 |
| Publisher: | Sydney University Press |
| Citation: | Kids Count: Better early childhood education and care in Australia |
| Abstract: | There is consensus around the world that young children must
experience high quality services, not only to ensure the best
possible future outcomes, but because children have the right to
the best possible present (Elliott 2004; Myers 2004; Wylie &
Thompson 2003). All children are found to benefit from high
quality early childhood programs, but those from disadvantaged
backgrounds demonstrate stronger advantages (Myers 2004). The
catchphrase ‘the importance of the early years’ has now become a
call to arms: it is recognised worldwide that we must provide the
best possible services to young children and their families (Stanley,
Prior & Richardson 2005). However, there is not universal
agreement as to what constitutes best possible early childhood
services. Understandings of quality are value-based and change as
values change (Childcare Resource and Research Unit 2004).
Understandings are also different across cultures, religions,
contexts and the person or group making the judgment (Friendly,
Doherty & Beach 2006). Myers (2004, p.19) argues that ‘different
cultures may expect different kinds of children to emerge from
early educational experience and favour different strategies to
obtain those goals’. There is not a universal definition of quality: in
different times and places different kinds of practices are valued as
high quality.
Despite this, within the Western world, professionals assume at
least a basic common understanding (see Cryer, 1999 for example).
The European Commission Childcare Network attempted to define
these commonalities and came up with 40 quality targets (available
at www.childcarequality.org). Analysing the literature from a range of European countries, Myers (2004) argues there is consensus
around quality components including safety, good hygiene, good
nutrition, appropriate opportunities for rest, quality of opportunity
across diversity, opportunities for play, opportunities for developing
motor, social, cognitive and language skills, positive interactions
with adults, support of emotional development, and the provision
of support for positive peer interactions. However, performance
indicators identifying how these principles play out in practice
differ in different contexts and with different levels of expectations
and resources. What is clear is that quality is multidimensional,
complex and multi-theoretical (Duigan 2005; Raban, Ure &
Wangiganayake 2003). Single indicators of quality are ineffective, as
quality outcomes for children are found to relate to a complex
interplay of many different factors (Buell & Cassidy 2001). |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2147 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-920898-70-0 |
| Appears in Collections: | Kids Count: Better early childhood education and care in Australia
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