Education Quality in Daycare

The project 'Educational quality in day care - emphasizing responsive, social relationships between young children and adults', is a specific and systematic effort aimed at ensuring that all 0-2 year-old children in family daycares develop to the best of their potential, especially in terms of their socio-emotional and language development regardless of their background.
Educational quality is defined here by the concept of process quality, which deals with the relationship and interactions between child and adult as well as the ability of (the daycare provider) to stimulate and support child development and learning. Furthermore, educational quality also includes the pedagogical competencies that are important for interactions stimulating children's play and learning. The project is broadly based on the Vygotsky-inspired Abecedarian Approach. The Abecedarian Approach centers on high-quality adult-child interactions through four core elements: Language Priority, Conversational Reading, Enriched Caregiving, and Learning Games. We will teach the daycare providers and professionals to integrate the specific educational content and strategies of this approach into their everyday practices, and thereby enhance the well-being, socio-emotional development, and learning of children. We expect that the increase in educational quality in particular will gain children coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
We conduct a cluster randomized controlled experiment (C-RCT) in 11 Danish municipalities, comprising approximately 2400 children enrolled in approx. 600 family daycares to evaluate the effect on children’s development. We will also carry out a qualitative implementation evaluation to examine which factors hinder or improve the implementation of the intervention.