Quality of early childhood education and care in Japanese accredited nursery centers: A study using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition (ECERS-3).
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2023
2023
Historique:
received:
25
05
2022
accepted:
27
01
2023
entrez:
10
2
2023
pubmed:
11
2
2023
medline:
15
2
2023
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
This study presents the first quantitative evaluation of the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Japan to make a significant contribution to the body of knowledge accumulated on ECEC in countries where research has been limited. We observed 30 classes comprising 3-year-olds, 28 classes comprising 5-year-olds, and 30 classes comprising mixed-ages from publicly provided nursery centers under the jurisdiction of the Kanto metropolitan area, Japan. An internationally-recognized quality rating scale for ECEC called the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, 3rd edition, which consists of six subscales, was used for this study. In contrast to previous studies conducted in the US, the results of this study showed that the Japanese ECEC is characterized as showing higher scores in the two subscales, "Personal Care Routines" and "Interaction," and showing lower score in the subscale, "Learning Activities." In addition, this study showed that the quality of ECEC varied across nursery centers. Furthermore, with regard to the two subscales, "Interaction" and "Language and Literacy," the degree of variation within centers differed across nursery centers. This study analyzed how these characteristics of Japanese ECEC can be partly produced by the existence of national guideline for nursery centers authorized by the Japanese government. In addition, mechanisms producing differences in the quality of ECEC among and within centers were also discussed.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36763584
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281635
pii: PONE-D-22-15088
pmc: PMC9916609
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0281635Informations de copyright
Copyright: © 2023 Fujisawa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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