The Issue: The care and environment provided during infancy and the preschool years strongly at influence a child’s future learning ability and social skills. 54% of Canadian child experience some sort of nonparental care before entering school, but it is still unclear how the conditions of child care (quality, type, people) affect the intellectual, language and behavioral development of the child. Parents, early childhood educators, and policy makers need to make decisions about child care that are based on good research findings, so the Canadian Center for Knowledge Mobilization (CCKM) reviewed the research to address this issue.

The Research: The CCKM reviewed 66 papers that looked at whether or not there was a relationship between the conditions of child care provided outside the home and children’s thinking and language skills or their behavior. Test results of 28 000 children aged 0-to-8 years, from five different countries were included in the review. Any family factors that are known to influence child development were taken into account in the analysis.

The Results: The authors examined seven facets of non parental child care: type of care, age of entry, time spent in care, stability/consistency of care, quality of care, teacher education and adult-child ratio. Type of care (private home setting or in a center) influenced the intellectual and language development of children and the evidence suggested that center care resulted in better development. It was also found that earlier entry and more time spent in care resulted in a more positive intellectual, language and behavioral development. Higher quality of care (assessed by the space, furnishings, language level, amount/quality of activities, caregiver interactions, etc.) resulted in better development of intellectual and language skills and slightly better social skills. A higher level of teacher education resulted in better development in all areas. The argument that private home day care settings are better for children than care centers could not be supported by this review. This may be because the quality in publicly funded child care centers is consistent whereas the quality can vary greatly from one home setting to the next.

+++

The preceding is a summary of: Canadian Centre for Knowledge Mobilisation (2006, June). The impact of child care on children’s development: what the research says. A report to the Canadian Council on Learning from the Canadian Centre for Knowledge Mobilisation’s Research Guide to Child Care Decision Making. Waterloo, ON.