Measuring Interaction Quality Between Professionals and Families and Its Relations to Structural Aspects of Preschools

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Use of Classroom Observations to Reveal Relationships Between Evaluative and Structural Program Components

Abstract

The structure-process model of pedagogical quality in early childhood education and care [ECEC] defines networking with families as an important component of early childhood education (Kluczniok & Roßbach, 2014). Due to a lack of adequate measures, little is known about this quality dimension. The present study explores the interaction quality between professionals and families using a new observational scale. 912 interactions between professionals and families were captured in 107 preschools by two trained data collectors. Results reveal that the interaction quality can be empirically differentiated into three aspects: willingness of interaction, communication strategies and farewell. Pedagogical concept of the preschools and percentage of professionals with a university degree were predictive for the interaction quality between professionals and families.

Authors

• Theresia Gabriele Hummel, University of Bamberg

• Franziska Cohen, Free University - Berlin

• Juliane Schünke, Freie Universität Berlin

• Yvonne Anders, Freie Universität Berlin