Effects of Day Care Environment in Singapore.

Understanding the quality of the day care environment is useful for practitioners and policymakers in the evaluation and improvement of day care provisions. Regulated features, interactive dimensions and global indices of quality have been examined in relation to child developmental outcomes. This study investigated the effects of variations in the day care environment on linguistic and social-emotional development of preschool children in Singapore in order to answer the following questions: (1) Are there environmental differences in day care centers in Singapore? (2) How are differences in characteristics of the day care environment related to children's linguistic and social-emotional development? (3) What are the effects of day care quality on children's development after taking home background into account? The subjects were 122 children, ages 49 to 72 months, enrolled in full-day care and randomly selected from 16 centers. Subjects completed pre- and posttests consisting of academic, linguistic, and social-emotional assessments. The results indicated that center quality and specific subscales as measured by the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) predict some linguistic and social-emotional outcomes of children. (MOK)