CCL Home > Research Activities > Funded Research
Summary (PDF 25 KB)
Full Report (PDF 320 KB)
Côté, S., Dept. Médecine sociale et préventive, Université de Montréal Mongeau, C., Dept. Médecine sociale et préventive, Université de Montréal Xu, Q., Groupe de recherche sur l’inadaptation psychosociale, Université de Montréal
In western industrialized countries, the majority of children receive child-care services before their entry to school. Although child-care services use has become the norm, several questions about its impact on children’s development remain unanswered. Of particular importance is the extent to which differences of quality in child-care services influence children’s development, and whether some children may benefit more than others from receiving child-care services.
Some studies have shown that enrolment into high quality child-care programs could contribute to the improvement of disadvantaged children’s intellectual performance. However, most of these programs (e.g., Head Start, Abecederian, etc.) involves home visiting, family support (baby food, diapers, etc), parental support as well as specialized educational activities in supervized centres. Although effective, such intensive services are not generalized and accessible to everyone. Community-wide child-care services, however, could also provide accessible educational activities for children but quality levels inevitably vary from one service to another. Few studies have investigated the association between the quality of child-care services available to communities and school-related abilities in children.
In the present study, we examined the associations between global quality of child-care services in the universal child-care network of the province of Quebec and school abilities such as vocabulary, knowledge of numbers and general school readiness. Observation of global quality of child care targets aspects of the setting (space and furnishings, material), of the organization (personal care routines, activities), of the social climate (interaction) and educative content (language and reasoning) all combined in a global assessment. Results of this study provide some support for the notion that high quality child care services may promote children’s cognitive development.
Top