Holli A. Tonyan

Everyday routines: A window into the cultural organization of family child care

Eco(logical)-cultural Theory suggests that a daily routine results from individuals adapting cultural ideas to the constraints of a local context or ecology. Using Ecocultural Theory, this research examined family child care providers’ descriptions of daily activities and overall approach to understand cultural models. The results highlighted a predominant cultural model reflecting ideas of “natural” child development facilitated by a structured daily routine. However, an alternative model emphasizing flexibility, intimacy, and relationships was also present. The results suggest that we need to better understand the conditions under which certain models become widely appropriated and enacted.

Opportunities to Practice What is Locally Valued: An Ecocultural Perspective on Quality in Family Child Care Homes

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Drawing from cultural approaches to human development (Rogoff, 2003; Weisner, 2002, 2005) and cognition (Quinn & Holland, 1987), this article presents a working model and theory of change for quality in family child care by defining quality as the alignment of children’s opportunities for learning and development with locally relevant ideals or cultural models. Providers—as the people responsible for organizing children’s day-to-day activity—are conceptualized as the agents of change, and daily routine activities are the primary targets for quality improvement efforts. Sustainability, or how much daily routines fit with the conditions and meaning for participants in a setting, is hypothesized to moderate the impact of experiences in family child care on children’s long-term development. Each component of the model is presented with supporting evidence from published and pilot research. Practice or Policy: Quality ratings capturing alignment between what is valued and done can better incorporate diversity in stakeholders’ ideas about what matters for children and can offer parents and providers more descriptive information about quality and how to maintain or improve it.

Engaging With Quality Improvement Initiatives: A Descriptive Study of Learning in the Complex and Dynamic Context of Everyday Life for Family Child Care Providers

ABSTRACT Research Findings: This article reports on family child care providers’ views about their engagement with professional development programs, including providers who were and were not participating in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems in Los Angeles, California. Most providers participating in the study were taking active steps to improve their work with children, but only a few providers described themselves as satisfied with the programs available. First, we report on why providers chose to engage (or not) in formal professional development activities; specifically, we explore the relationship between career phase and engagement and the levels of participation reported by seasoned providers. Second, we describe the way many providers strategically self-customized their quality improvement (QI) activities by drawing flexibly on available programs or by finding a coach who would work with them on their specific needs. Practice or Policy: Our findings suggest that in order to increase engagement with formal QI systems, designers of professional development supports must better align these supports with the needs and interests of family child care providers in terms of content and modes of delivery. We propose the concept of just-in-time professional development as 1 way to make QI offerings more responsive to some family child care providers’ needs.

Connecting cultural models of home-based care and childminders' career paths: an eco-cultural analysis

Family day care or childminding involves a particularly transient workforce. This paper introduces Eco(logical)-Cultural Theory (ECT) to examine the cultural organisation of childminding and presents an ECT analysis of pilot survey results: asking minders about their daily routines and their career paths. Reasons for becoming a minder and aspirations for the future varied and were associated with the organisation of daily routines. Among minders who wished to continue childminding, daily routines were related to cultural models. Those aspiring to work in centres rather than homes tended to organise daily activities high in structure (i.e. similarity from day to day). Most reported dissatisfaction with home-based facilities, suggesting dissonance between models of care and local ecology. The childminding workforce is diverse and an ECT approach focused on asking childminders about their daily lives may yield valuable empirical data to inform professional development efforts.

Family Child/Day Care Homes as a Cultural Context or World for Babies and Toddlers

Using the concept of “cultural models,” this chapter presents a framework for researching daily life in family child care. Photo-stimulated interviews were used to identify cultural models or cognitive schema for how to care for children. These cultural models both guided everyday practice and were the standards against which providers evaluated everyday life. Providers varied in how much they valued, enacted, and assessed/documented (1) ensuring that children experience love, fun, and affection as important in and of itself, (2) school readiness, or (3) both. Whereas the first cultural model – love, fun, and togetherness – may afford babies and toddlers more opportunities to construct the close relationships essential for early development, the second, school readiness, model may activate more technical aspects of professionals’ work at the expense of close relationships. Similarly, the first model frames babies as being, whereas the second emphasizes babies as becoming. Thus, the process of producing and reproducing these cultural models through daily practices may afford babies and toddlers different opportunities for learning and development. Because these are only two of many possible cultural models relevant to child care, this approach may be important for better understanding the contexts of babies and toddlers.

Understanding and Incorporating Home-Based Child Care Into Early Education and Development Systems

Millions of families across the United States rely on home-based child care—noncustodial care in home-based settings—while they work or attend school. Indeed, home-based child care is the most prevalent form of noncustodial child care in the United States, especially for infants and toddlers and children living in poverty. The National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) estimated that about 7.1 million children from birth to age 5 receive care in home-based child care settings from more than 3.7 million caregivers (NSECE Project Team, 2016). In contrast, an estimated 3.8 million children receive care in centers. About half of home-based child care providers are located in moderateor high-poverty density areas, and less than one third are paid for providing care. Research indicates that families choose home-based care for a number of reasons (Porter, Paulsell, Nichols, Begnoche, & Del Grosso, 2010). Trust is a major factor, especially for families with infants and toddlers. Some families, especially those who are recent immigrants, choose relatives or friends as caregivers because they share the same culture, home language, values, and childrearing practices. Parents who work nontraditional hours—evenings, nights, weekends, or irregular schedules—may use home-based child care because it is flexible enough to meet their needs. They may also prefer a home setting for their young children during early morning, evening, or overnight hours. Some lowincome families choose home-based child care because they cannot afford center-based options or do not have access to child care centers in their neighborhoods. Home-based child care providers have less access to resources and supports than child care centers. Most states offer lower subsidy rates for home-based child care providers than child care centers. Some state quality improvement efforts exclude some or all home-based child care providers. Nearly half of unpaid caregivers have other jobs in addition to caregiving responsibilities, which limits the time during which they can participate in quality improvement initiatives (NSECE Project Team, 2016). Home-based child care providers often work alone and do not have regular opportunities to share ideas with others about how to engage children in learning activities or in the community. Moreover, research suggests that home-based child care providers face a range of other challenges, work-related stress, physical exhaustion, and isolation (Porter et al., 2010). Research on home-based child care is limited. Studies show that many home-based caregivers are positively engaged with children and provide safe, healthy environments but also that home-based child care settings appear to provide lower levels of cognitive stimulation (Paulsell et al., 2010). Available research suggests that most home-based child care is of poor to moderate quality; however, few quality measures have effectively captured the potential strengths of diverse home-based care settings. Perhaps most critical is that the field lacks rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of strategies for supporting quality in home-based child care settings. Whereas evidence-based quality interventions exist for use in center-based settings, little rigorous research has examined the efficacy of strategies for improving the quality of home-based child care. A national scan of the field conducted in 2010 identified eight such strategies, ranging from home-visiting approaches to the provision of materials