Richard Fiene

Professional development and the quality of child care: An assessment of Pennsylvania's child care training system

The education and training of child care workers are viewed as keys to improving classroom/caregiver dynamics and the overall quality of child care. This assessment of the Pennsylvania Child Care/Early Childhood Development Training System offers an analysis of this hypothesis. The research was designed for dual purposes: to identify training needs for Pennsylvania child care providers and to assess the impact of training and work environment on the quality of care. The results highlight specific areas where there are needs for training and reveal a clear association between opportunities for professional growth and the quality of care.

Mastering course content and learner satisfaction in early childhood education: A comparison of regular classroom instruction with three variations of internet delivery*

Abstract In the spring semester 2000, a Penn State course, ECE 479 (The Young Childs Play as Educative Process), was taught by the same instructor in four delivery formats. One group consisted of a regular classroom, held on campus. A second group, also on campus, was taught in a computer lab via the Internet; and there were opportunities for interaction with peers and the instructor. A third group took the course on the Internet as part of a local distance education group; hence, there were some limited opportunities for face‐to‐face interaction with peers and the instructor. The fourth group took the course on the Internet, as part of a statewide distance education group, where there were no opportunities for face‐to‐face interaction. Twenty students who enrolled in the course (5 per group) completed questionnaires and phone interviews. Information was gathered on professional backgrounds, computer experience, and initial level of content knowledge on the topic of the ECE Internet course. Sixteen students who completed the course were interviewed again to evaluate satisfaction with the course and to estimate learning outcomes. Across the four conditions general satisfaction was expressed with the content, activities, and course requirements and with the teacher. However, students in the three computer groups expressed dissatisfaction over technical problems (all four who did not complete the course came from these computer groups). Significant gains in content knowledge occurred for the classroom group, while the learning in the three Internet‐based instruction groups did not show the same gains. Concern was expressed related to the lack of face‐to‐face interaction, making the learning environment less desirable. Although Internet technology provides a great deal of promise, these results suggest that improvements are needed to make this delivery modality more effective for in‐service distance learning.

A Comparison of International Child Care and US Child Care Using the Child Care Aware — NACCRRA Child Care Benchmarks

This is a first of its kind study comparing the USA to other world countries utilizing the Child Care Aware — NACCRRA (National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies) Child Care Benchmarks related to health and safety rules and regulations. A team of researchers analyzed the child care/early care & education rules and regulations from the USA and a selected group of countries to do a comparative analysis using the Child Care Aware — NACCRRA benchmarking scoring protocol. The results from the analyses were somewhat unexpected in that the scores between the USA and the other countries were not as statistically significant in the overall scores. However, when more specific benchmarks were compared statistically significant differences did appear in the health & safety and professional development areas.