The study finds a surprising diversity in early childhood care

A new study of kindergarten children in a Midwestern state identified seven different paths that children followed in their early education and care before arriving at school.

The researchers were surprised by the different experiences the children brought with them to kindergarten: while some received care only at their home or mainly in a daycare, others switched back and forth between different types of care or had other arrangements.

This study is one of the few that examined childcare experiences of children from birth to kindergarten, which allowed researchers to grasp the wide range of pathways, said Nathan Helsabeck, lead author of the study and associate researcher. graduate. in Educational Studies from Ohio State University.

“There are more nuanced differences in children’s experiences before kindergarten than we initially thought,” said Helsabeck, who is also an associate with Ohio’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Education and Policy.

“Watching how children arrive at kindergarten could help us better consider what they need when they enter school.”

The study was published online in the journal Early education and development.

The study is part of a larger federally funded project designed to improve understanding of what happens in kindergarten through third grade classes. The data was collected from two large suburban school districts including 25 schools, 152 classrooms, and 3,472 students. A subsample of 568 students was used in this study.

Part of the study involved parents completing questionnaires on education and care for their children from birth to age 5.

The researchers found that the largest group of children – 44 percent – received home-only care during the first five years of life.

About 10% spent the first two years at home and in the third year it became more and more likely that they were in a service center. Another 7% spent these early years mainly in center-based care.

These were the three pathways the researchers speculated would occur before conducting the study, said Kelly excluded, co-author of the study and an associate professor of humanities at Ohio State and an associate professor at the Crane Center.

But they also found four other pathways: The second largest group, 21%, were at home for most of the first few years, but enrolled in a preschool or daycare program in the last year before kindergarten. Other groups included children mainly cared for in informal settings (5%); who switched between home care and informal care (8%); and those had both home and center care for all 5 years (5%).

Why were there so many different paths?

“It reflects the availability of childcare services in this country,” said Larousse.

“Childcare for babies and toddlers is expensive, so there aren’t many affordable options for parents. Parents have to find different ways to care for their children while they work.”

Helsabeck said he was particularly affected by children whose care has shifted from year to year, often from home to informal care, as parental circumstances changed.

“There was more than I expected in this category,” he said.

“We need to realize that some children face a lot of instability and their childcare situations can change a lot. This could affect how they go to school.”

The study also looked at how children who followed different paths in kindergarten did.

The results showed no differences in test scores between children from different backgrounds. This was surprising, because most studies show an advantage for children who spent more time in home care, Helsabeck said.

But he warned against making too much of that discovery. It could be that there were not enough children in each of the seven groups to reveal the differences in this study.

The results confirmed other studies that found that children who spent most of their time in care centers during the first five years had more social and behavioral problems reported by teachers in kindergarten.

This could be because these children already feel comfortable in school settings and aren’t so shy about acting, excluded said. They may also get bored more easily because the experience is not new to them.

“This is a real challenge for kindergarten teachers to orient children who are brand new in this environment with those children who are already familiar with the classroom environment,” she said.

The researchers said the seven asylum pathways found in this study may not be the same everywhere.

“We only looked at two school districts in one state. This won’t represent the whole country,” Helsabeck said.

“But what we can draw from this is the wide range of experiences children bring to kindergarten. This will affect how they go to school.”