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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The main goal of this study was to examine parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of
quality in early childhood education for toddlers in Portugal. A total of 110 parents and 110
teachers participated in the study, rating the importance of specific quality criteria and assessing
childcare classrooms, based on the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale Parent Questionnaire
(ITERS-RPQ) and on the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale Teacher Questionnaire
(ITERS-RTQ), respectively. The same quality items were used by external observers to evaluate
the same classrooms with the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-R; Harms et al.
2003). Results suggest that parents and teachers give high importance scores to the quality criteria
included in the ITERS-R, substantiating the use of this instrument in Portugal. Although correlations
were found between observers’ and parents’ ratings of quality, and between observers’ and
teachers’ ratings of quality, results suggest that teachers and parents consider education and care in
toddler classrooms to be substantially more adequate than the researchers observed.
Description
Keywords
Childcare quality Early childhood education Parents’ perceptions Teachers’ perceptions Portugal
Citation
Publisher
Springer