The effects of education-oriented and maintenance-oriented preschools on children's development

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the comparative effects -of custodial and educational preschool centers on some aspects of cognitive, social and emotional development of three and five year old children from low SES families. Three maintenance-oriented and three educationoriented preschool centers were used. A total of 119 subjects, half from maintenance-oriented and half from education-oriented preschools, matched for age and sex, were used as subjects. Each child's play during the free play sessions was observed for a ten minute sample on five occasions. Parten gradient of social participation was used to assess social participation and Tizard scale of Complexity of play organization was used to assess complexity of Behaviour. Autonomy was measured by seven items which rated children for the autonomy and initiative they showed. The attainment of each child in social participation, complexity of behaviour and autonomy dimensions was also assessed through interviews with the mothers. It was hypothesized that there would be differences in the total social participation, complexity of behaviour, and autonomy scores of subjects attending preschool centers with different orientations in favor of education oriented preschools. It was also predicted that there would be age differences in these dimensions. The results revealed that children attending educationaly oriented preschool centers obtained significantly higher scores in complexity of behaviour and social participation dimensions supporting the hypotheses. However no significant differences were found in autonomy dimension. Age related changes on these measured aspects of cognitive, social and emotional development were significant in the expected direction. The results indicated that the type of preschool center attended affects cognitive and social development and supported the notion of positive effects of education-oriented preschool care.