Relationship between 5 Year Olds' Socioemotional Development and Daycare Experience and Daycare Quality

보육경험 및 보육의 질과 5세 유아의 사회.정서발달과의 관계

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between early childhood socioemotional development and day care experience and daycare quality. The subjects were 116 children, age 5 years old, from 17 daycare centers. The teachers at the 17 daycare centers rated the quality of their facility while the mothers of the 116 children assessed their children's socioemotional development. Daycare experience was composed of: the time period, hours per day, and the child's starting age at enrollment in daycare. Daycare quality was measured by questionnaire developed by Park(1995). Children's socioemotional development was rated by K-CBCL (Oh et al. 1997). The results were as follows. First, starting daycare experience less than 2 years of age, attending more than 6 days per week, and attending more than 8 hours per day of daycare experience were negatively related with children's development. Second, quality of daycare such as child-centered curriculum, abundant interaction between teachers and parents, opportunity for continuing education of teachers, higher levels of rewards and incentives for teachers, and the provision of nutritious food were positively related to the children's development.