Dimension of Pedagogical Quality in Preschool.

The purpose of this study is to describe the concept of quality at daycare centres. The study examines how the four dimensions of educational quality (the societal context, the child, the teacher and the learning context) can be used in conjunction with evaluation.  In this article, the author evaluates possibilities of the children to participate and influence early childhood education and care on the basis of these four dimensions.

The result clarifies the complexity of the concept of pedagogical quality and how this is constituted in the interaction between different aspects of human and material resources. In order to achieve comprehensive insight into the pedagogical quality, it is necessary to study the same aspect and phenomenon as well as the same situations from more than one perspective at a time. However, the study suggests that there are indications within ‘the child carer’s dimension’ that child carers at high-quality daycare centres are more critical towards their own performance in their self evaluations, whereas child carers at daycare centres of low quality tend to focus on external constraints and often evaluate themselves more positively than an external evaluation.

The study is designed as a case-control study. The documentation is collected by means of ECERS as a self-assessment tool at 14 daycare centres and through interviews with29 children, aged three to five years, at daycare centres and 39 teachers from nine kindergartens.

Sheridan, S. (2007). Dimension of Pedagogical Quality in Preschool. International Journal of Early Years Education, 15 (2), S.197-217.