Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Children and Youth Services Review
Volume
155
Publisher
Elsevier
School
School of Education
RAS ID
62188
Funders
Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority
Abstract
International recognition of the early years as a crucial foundational period has led to the design and implementation of quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) that define, communicate, and monitor the components of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The aim of these policies is to achieve effective quality assurance and improvement through a system-oriented approach to assessment and evaluation. Informed by ecological systems theory, this paper outlines a three-phase, mixed-methods design for researching a national sample of child care centres that showed overall improvement on the Australian National Quality Standard (NQS) assessment and rating (A&R) criteria. The study samples are drawn from a national dataset of centre-based child care services with two or more A&R rounds and an initial rating of Working Towards NQS (N = 1,935). The results of this study will provide insights into the macro-, exo-, meso- and micro-systems level factors and strategies that support quality in ECEC services.
DOI
10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107278
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Harrison, L. J., Andrews, R., Hadley, F., Irvine, S., Waniganayake, M., Barblett, L., . . . Li, H. (2023). Protocol for a mixed-methods investigation of quality improvement in early childhood education and care in Australia. Children and Youth Services Review, 155, article 107278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107278