Ecology of Nonparental Child Care

Also known as Day Care: care given to children by people other than parents while the parents are not there.

Extended Day Care: care provided for children before/after school hours or during vacations.

Quality: caregiver who provides warm, loving care a guidance for the child and works with the family to ensure that the child develops in the best possible way; a setting that keeps the child safe, secure, and healthy; DAP that help the child develop emotionally, socially, mentally, and physically.

Components of Optimal Care

size of group

caregiver-child ratios

whether the caregiver had specialized training in child development or ECD.

Macrosystem Influences on Nonparental Child Care

political ideology

economics

science and technology

both parents to work

pressure to impart academic skills to all children as early as possible.

social responsibility, competition, and equal opportunity.

Research Concerns

separation from mother

child-care setting

ecological systems

Psychological Development

Spitz's Study: Infants raised in the foundling home had poor appetites and lacked interest in their surroundings, exhibited severe depression which resulted in delay of their growth and mental development. The infants raised in the prison developed normally.

Bowlby's Study: When a child is separated from their mother due to hospitalization, employment, death, etc., then there could be severe emotional, social and intellectual consequences.

Skeels's Study: The quality of care (nurture) affects the children's development, not the relationship of the person who provides it (nature).

Contemporary Studies: Secure and insecure attachments.

Cognitively Oriented Curriculum: a curriculum that attempts to blend the virtues of purposeful teaching with open-ended, child-initiated activities.

assimilation: mental adaptation to one's environment by incorporating experiences (Piaget).

Piaget's Stages

Sensorimotor (Birth-2yrs)

Preoperational (2-7 yrs)

Concrete Operational (7-11 yrs)

Formal Operational (11+ yrs)

Developmental Interaction Curriculum: a curriculum that is individualized in relation to each child's stage of development while providing many opportunities for children to interact with peers and adults.

Vygotsky's Tools of the Mind Curriculum

disciplined mind: can focus on improving and mastering a skill

synthesizing mind: socialization toward integrating ideas from different disciplines into a coherent whole and the ability to communicate that integration.

creating mind: uncover and clarify new problems and questions, and pose possible and novel solutions.

respectful mind: awareness and appreciativeness of differences between human individuals and between human groups.

ethical mind: ability to evaluate one's own word and the needs of society, conceptualizing how all citizens can work for the common good.