Exploring the Quality of Early Childhood Education in China: Implications for Early Childhood Teacher Education

Abstract

The following article introduces an exploratory study that was designed to measure the quality of early childhood education within its ever changing sociocultural context utilizing the Early Childhood Learning Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) in 40 classrooms in Beijing, China. Implications for early childhood teacher education, including the education of children with exceptional needs are addressed along with recommendations for future research.The development of Chinese early childhood education is following a distinctive trend of integrating Western educational philosophy into national curriculum guidance for classroom practices. This integration process encountered many challenges due to strong influences by unique Chinese cultural and economic characteristics and requires investigation in terms of what constitutes a high quality early childhood program in mainland China. Research on the global quality of early childhood education to help international scholars and practitioners understand philosophical change in classroom applications in China is scarce. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to present an exploratory study conducted in public kindergarten classrooms using the Chinese version of Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales-Revised and provide implications for teacher education. Introduction to the Early Education System in ChinaThe population in China exceeds 1.3 billion people representing 56 national tribes from 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, and 4 municipalities (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2006). Beijing, as the capital city and municipality, has over 13 million people, which is more than the number found in New York City. In order to reduce the overwhelming population density China has enforced a one-child-per-family policy throughout the nation since 1978. Being an only child, a Chinese child faces great parental expectations regarding academic achievement starting in the early years. The limited years of compulsory education provided by the Chinese government apply to children from Grades 1 to 9 in both urban and rural areas. Prior to first grade, children usually attend early childhood programs called kindergartens, which are full-day programs serving children ages 3 to 6. Facilities for children before age 3 are considered nursery schools. Traditionally, children under 3 are more likely to stay home with grandparents. In this article we focus on kindergarten programs and the corresponding early childhood teacher education programs. Public Versus Private KindergartensKindergartens in China can be divided into two categories: private and public based on funding sources. Public kindergarten means the government-whether at the federal, province, city, or local town level-has full ownership of the school. There are generally three types of public kindergartens: (1) department of education related, (2) state organization or corporation related, and (3) local town or county related (Pang, Liu, & Hu, 2008). More than half of the Chinese people reside in rur...

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