1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The purpose of this study was to examine parental selection criteria and satisfaction with day care, knowledge about centre philosophy, teacher education and quality of the day-care environment.» (p. 133)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Ont participé à cette recherche 261 parents et 94 éducateurs associés à 44 «non-profit day-cares centres» de trois villes canadiens. Les parents ont participé à l’étude par le biais d’une entrevue téléphonique, alors que la qualité des centres a été analysée selon l’échelle ECERS-R (Harms et al., 2005)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«Many parents reported knowledge of the centre’s philosophy and were highly satisfied with the care but sometimes held inaccurate views of the teacher’s education. Parent education positively predicted parental knowledge of centre philosophy, while a trend was evident between parent knowledge of centre philosophy and the quality of the day-care environment (i.e. educator-child interaction), after accounting for site effects. Given that parent knowledge about their child’s day-care experience may sometimes be incomplete, more frequent and informative parent-educator communication is required, particularly about children’s learning and development.» (p. 133) Les auteures en arrivent aux conclusions suivantes: «[Our] findings have direct relevance for early childhood educators and highlight the need for teachers to assume greater professional responsibility for helping parents to understand the important factors of the day-care environment (e.g. philosophy, curriculum). Our findings also have direct relevance for the kinds of questions that parents should raise in assessing the quality of their child’s centre (e.g. What kind of activities are provided? What are the opportunities for independent and social play? What are children learning during different activities?). Furthermore, our findings reveal the need for a public awareness campaign in cooperation with early childhood professional associations to inform parents about critical factors.» (p. 145)