2-135 - Cultural perspectives on Quality in Early Childhood Education: Evidence from Italy, Portugal, The Netherlands, and the USA

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) research and policy have increasingly focused on the importance of high quality learning environments for optimal child development. Current widely used measures of quality such as the CLASS (Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2009) focus primarily on interactions between teachers and children. The proposed symposium will draw from research with ECEC teachers and pre-school aged children in several Western countries, in order to offer broader perspectives on concepts of quality and its measurement in ECEC classrooms. The first paper will compare teacher beliefs and reported practices in the Netherlands and the USA, and will also examine their correspondence to the CLASS as well as difference from the CLASS. The second paper will draw from the same comparative study, introducing the concept of ECEC teachers as “providers of settings” for children’s development, as illustrated by both teacher interviews and the organization of physical settings and activities across the day in each cultural place. The third paper will report on Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch teachers’ reflections on the CLASS as it relates to their own experience in the classroom. Altogether, the papers will provide more insight into process quality and developmental goals in ECEC in diverse cultural contexts. Discussion will center on the value of comparative cross-cultural research for developing more comprehensive measures of quality in ECEC, with implications for public policy in various contexts.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chairs

• Sara Harkness, University of Connecticut

• Saskia D.M. van Schaik, Utrecht University

Discussant

• Paul P M Leseman, Utrecht University

Individual Presentations

• Using US and Dutch ECE teachers' beliefs to study definitions of ECEC quality - Presenting Author: Saskia D.M. van Schaik, Utrecht University; Sara Harkness, University of Connecticut; Caroline Johnston Mavridis, University of Connecticut; Jia Li Liu, University of Connecticut; Paul P M Leseman, Utrecht University; Douglas Granger, Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research, University of California Irvine; Charles M. Super, Uni

• Early Childhood Education as a Provider of Activity Settings for Children’s Development: Evidence from U.S. and the Netherlands - Presenting Author: Sara Harkness, University of Connecticut; Saskia D.M. van Schaik, Utrecht University; Charles M. Super, Uni; Caroline Johnston Mavridis, University of Connecticut; Jia Li Liu, University of Connecticut; Paul P M Leseman, Utrecht University

• What is universal? A critical cultural approach to CLASS. The voice of Italian, Portuguese and Dutch ECEC teachers. - Presenting Author: Giulia Pastori, University of Milan-Bicocca; Valentina Pagani, University of Milano-Bicocca