How early and how long?

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pedagogical staff’s view of the combination of young children’s early start and long days at daycare facilities, i.e. children under the age of three.

The results show that a large majority of the pedagogical staff believes that children should start later than at the age of one, and that they should have shorter days at the daycare facility than the vast majority of the youngest children actually have. Only one third of the pedagogical staff believes that young children can start daycare at the age of one, and that they should stay at the daycare facility full-time at that age. However, the researchers also point to the fact that the study has difficulties explaining the different attitudes of the pedagogical staff. The researchers have studied the following background variables in the early childhood educators: age, whether they have children themselves, social background, education, experience, size of the daycare facility as well organisation and child-adult ratio at the daycare facility.

The study was designed as a questionnaire survey, in which questionnaires were sent to the pedagogical staff (trained as well as untrained) at 1000 randomly selected daycare facilities in Norway. Almost 60% of the selected daycare facilities took part in the study. Thus the study comprises 1357 childcare assistants (untrained staff) and 1192 early childhood educators, all of whom answered the questionnaire. The study combines two questions. In the first part of the questionnaire, the pedagogical staff are asked what they consider to be an appropriate age for enrolling a child in a daycare facility. In the second part of the questionnaire, the staff were asked how long they consider to be an appropriate for a child’s day at a daycare facility for children at different ages.

Løvgren, M. & Gulbrandsen, L. (2012). How early and how long? Nordisk Barnehageforskning 5(7), 1-9.