Size matters

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between staff size and perceived organizational support (POS) in early childhood education (ECE) organizations. Design/methodology/approach – A territory-wide questionnaire survey was designed to investigate the perceptions of preschool teachers in Hong Kong on four dimensions of organizational support, namely, teacher participation in decision making, school management support, school performance in organizational support, and organizational negativity in organizational support. In total, 2,066 teachers from 189 schools were sampled with stratified random sampling. Confirmatory factor analysis and latent mean analysis were employed. Findings – There was a significant relationship between staff size and POS. Specifically, teachers working at small schools in terms of staff size reported significantly higher POS than their counterparts in medium and large schools in aspects including teacher participation in decision making, school management support, and school performance in POS. Conversely, both medium and large schools had higher scores on organizational negativity. Research limitations/implications – There may exist other factors (e.g. principal leadership), which are not investigated in this study, that influence POS. Future studies are needed to capture a fuller structural relationship among an array of factors that influence POS. Originality/value – Research on staff size and POS has been conducted separately, without one element informing the other. The findings of the present study will stimulate more research on POS and staff size. The study will stimulate thinking about whether larger preschools are more efficient than smaller preschools in terms of scale of economies in a marker driven, ECE context. Building upon the foundation laid by the study, future studies may explore the interaction between staff size and POS on intended student outcomes in ECE.

Leading early childhood education centers as professional bureaucracies – social organizational structures in Finnish early childhood education

“…Similar changes have been noticed elsewhere, and the growing number of staff has been seen to increase challenges (Ho et al, 2016). Consequently, ECE teachers' ability to participate in decisionmaking and receive support from the ECE leader seem to have decreased (Ho et al, 2016). According to Keski-Rauska et al's (2016) research concerning distributed leadership model in Finnish ECE, the teachers felt that the number of staff for the two leaders in a decentralized unit reduced the time available to interact with ECE teachers.…”

“…ECE leaders are leading units formed of two or more centers, and the number of employees has increased (Eskelinen and Hjelt, 2017). Similar changes have been noticed elsewhere, and the growing number of staff has been seen to increase challenges (Ho et al, 2016). Consequently, ECE teachers' ability to participate in decisionmaking and receive support from the ECE leader seem to have decreased (Ho et al, 2016).…”

Structural characteristics and process quality in early childhood education and care

“…Also, an intervention study in which the intervention group was provided with grants and funding for quality improvement and professional development as well as on-site coaching, showed improvement in process quality compared to the control group (Boller et al, 2015 [53] ). Other US studies also reported that star ratings or quality levels of the existing state-level QRIS were related to process quality as observed with commonly used measures, such as the ECERS, CLASS Pre-K or CIS, although it mainly distinguished the lowest from the highest quality centres and did not reveal differences across all star or quality levels (Hestenes et al, 2015 [54] ; Lahti et al, 2015 [55] ; Lipscomb et al, 2017 [56] ). A more detailed investigation of staff characteristics measured by the QRIS showed that particularly director's qualifications were related to higher process quality, more than classroom staff qualifications (Lipscomb et al, 2017 [56] ).…”

Structures and systems influencing quality improvement in Australian early childhood education and care centres

“…While the number of children per adult and per classroom are known indicators of ECEC quality (Cryer et al, 1999 ), few studies have examined the relationship between the overall number of children and quality. Ho et al ( 2016 ) found that teachers working in smaller services reported higher perceived organisational support, including participation in decision making and support from management, and lower organisational negativity than their counterparts in medium and large settings. In contrast, Wong et al ( 2012 ) noted that centres with fewer enrolled children were negatively impacted by inadequate government financial support.…”