Toward the Ecology of Day Care in Canada: A Research Agenda for the 1980s
Keywords:
Day care, Early childhood education, Child development, Family dynamicsAbstract
With more preschool and school-aged children in need of day care, the need for research to inform policy evaluation and development in this area becomes more pressing. Research on day care has traditionally been fragmented between the disciplines of early childhood education, child development, and child care, with each discipline focusing on isolated aspects of the day care experience. This paper will argue that day care is an interdisciplinary phenomenon including individual, familial, governmental, and societal factors which interact with and impact upon each other. The paper presents an ecological approach to the study of day care, addressing the interaction of such factors as the developmental needs of children, the role of family structure and dynamics, and the impact of governmental funding and regulatory policies in the context of social and cultural values regarding the family and the socialization of children. Recent research on the ecology of day care in Canada and elsewhere is reviewed, and a day care research agenda for Canada in this decade is presented.
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