Structural and process quality in Danish preschools in connection with three preschool teacher generations

ABSTRACT

Within the research field quality in preschool, interactions between staff and children are widely recognised as the single most important factor. Hence, preschool teachers play an important role in underpinning children’s well-being, learning and development. However, prior research into preschool teachers’ educational level and other characteristics such as structural quality determinants and specifically previous attempts to determine the impact of these factors on process quality have been somewhat mixed. In the study, preschool quality derived from a sample consisting of 96 preschools located within three Danish municipalities and measured by the ECERS-3. The ECERS data and the civil registration numbers of children and employees were transferred to Statistics Denmark (DST). Using data from the registers, it was then possible to estimate correlations between individual quality markers and staff characteristics. In this article, we focussed specifically on correlations between the educational level and educational background of the pedagogical staff on the one hand and the quality of interactions on the other, hence, the prevalence of three preschool teacher generations could be traced and linked to preschool quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Preschool teachers
• quality in preschool
• ECERS-3
• quantitative research
• structural quality
• process quality
• teacher education

Notes

1 See Appendix Table A1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Think Tank DEA and by the UCN. The authors have no competing interests to declare.