Quality of care and education provided by Greek day-care centres: an approach from researcher's and early childhood educators' perspective

Abstract

The present study is aimed at examining the level of quality and care provided by Greek preschool programmes, from the researcher's and early childhood educators' perspectives and verify whether they evaluate with the same way. Research results indicate that according to the researcher's assessment both preschool and infant/toddler classrooms provide care and education of adequate quality, whereas according to early childhood educators their classrooms (both preschool and infant/toddler) provide care and education of good quality. Correlation analysis indicated that early childhood educators rated higher the quality of care and education provided by them compared with researcher. Years of experience and level of education have been found to correlate with early childhood educators' ratings. Thus, the type of setting has been found to correlate both with the researcher's and the early childhood educators' ratings. Research results suggest that the quality of care and education is a relative concept and substantiating previous research results highlight the need to take into account the perspectives of all those involved (parents, children and educators) when we attempt to define and evaluate the quality.

Keywords:

• ACEI Global Guidelines Assessment
• top-down and inside perspectives of quality
• Katz model
• assessment of quality
• early child care and education
• Greek day-care centres