News Release

2006-06-21 11:09:43

UW-led research team looks at impact of child-care choices on children's development

WATERLOO, Ont. (June 21, 2006) -- Research does not support the argument that children are better off in family home settings than in child-care centres, says the Centre for Canadian Knowledge Mobilisation (CCKM) in a report on what studies indicate about the impact of child-care choices on children's early development.

Led by University of Waterloo psychology professor Kathleen Bloom, UW students and alumni participated in CCKM's child-care research team, which published its findings in the Research Guide to Child Care Decision Making. It will assist parents, teachers and policy-makers in making evidence-based decisions regarding children and their care.

"The Research Guide provides child-care stakeholders with easy access to a landscape of high quality research evidence," Bloom said. "It is meant to inform the endless debate about child care, moving it above the level of personal beliefs, ideology and arguments based on single, opinion-confirming studies."

Bloom heads the CCKM, which is a non-partisan research group seeking to bridge the knowledge gap by communicating university research directly to community stakeholders.

What current research reveals, the Research Guide concludes, is that quality of care can vary greatly from one home setting to another. When child care in home settings is delivered by well-trained and dedicated early childhood educators, it can be of very high quality. But this is not always the case in home settings.

In contrast, the variability in quality among child-care centres, particularly publicly funded centres, is much smaller and on average, quality is higher. This is due in part, the Research Guide suggests, to the implementation of professional standards, regulations and monitoring in the child-care centres.

Bloom said that whether a child is cared for in a home setting or at a centre, what matters most, according to the research, is the quality of care provided.

"Stimulating toys and books, a variety of engaging activities and trained and sensitive caregivers ultimately do have a direct and positive impact on child development -- and there are no excuses for giving our children any less," she said.

The Research Guide, which presents a survey and synthesis of 66 carefully screened scientific studies of the impact of the conditions of child care on children's development, notes that quality of care is a key predictor of cognitive, language and behavioural development during the early years.

Quality care measurements in those studies, which tracked nearly 28,000 children across five countries, were based on both the environment provided (activities, intellectual stimulation and learning materials) and the characteristics of the caregivers themselves (sensitivity, attitudes, education and professional training). Some of the studies looked specifically at correlations between the location of care (in homes or centres) and developmental progress.

For the many Canadian parents with children enrolled in out-of-home daycare, the Research Guide's conclusions will come as reassuring news. According to this year's Statistics Canada survey, about 54 per cent of Canadian children currently experience some form of non-parental child care before entering school.

As well, the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth shows that the proportion of children who received non-parental child care increased significantly between 1994 and 2003 in all provinces except Alberta.

The CCKM survey of the research literature confirms that these children, now the majority, are well served and will benefit from their child-care centre experiences.

Funding for the work was provided in part by the Canadian Council on Learning and by Research Works!, a university-community alliance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Research Works! (www.research-works.ca) has launched numerous initiatives aimed to mobilize research on children's learning and literacy for application by parents, teachers, practitioners and policy-makers.

For a copy of the Research Guide to Child Care Decision Making, including details of the research review behind it, visit www.cckm.ca.

Resources

Contact:

Kathleen Bloom, 519-888-4009 or kbloom@research-works.ca

Angela Roorda, 519-888-4567 ext. 7153 or aroorda@uwaterloo.ca

John Morris, UW media relations, 519-888-4435 or jmorris@uwaterloo.ca

University of Waterloo release no. 85

2006-06-21 11:09:43