The purpose of this study was to examine how infants took a nap in a daycare center as part of their regular daily schedule and what daytime naps meant for daycare center teachers and infants. Two research questions were posed:
1. What do daytime naps...
The purpose of this study was to examine how infants took a nap in a daycare center as part of their regular daily schedule and what daytime naps meant for daycare center teachers and infants. Two research questions were posed:
1. What do daytime naps mean for infants as part of their daily schedule in a daycare center?
2. What do daytime naps mean for teachers as part of the daily schedule in a daycare center?
The subjects in this study were the infants in all-day classes and their homeroom teachers in a private daycare center located in the city of Jeonju, Jeollabuk-do. A participant observation and interview were conducted to gather data, which were qualitative research methods. The subjects were observed three or four times a week from December 2011, to March, 2012. After the collected data were classified by theme, they were analyzed and interpreted.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, for the infants, naptime meant time for rest, unfamiliar time, pleasant time, unpleasant time, time for following what friends did and time for gratifying desires through dreaming. The meaning of it hinged on the age of the infants. The younger infants felt more unstable about daytime naps, and the older ones had diverse feelings about that.
Second, for the daycare center teachers, naptime meant time for communicating with infants by patting, time for having emotional sympathy with them by playing with them from their perspectives, time for helping them, time for taking a rest to get recharged, time for catching up with work, and time for stimulating the development of infants. The meaning of daytime naps depended on whether the teachers viewed it as part of childcare or not.
Third, the teachers let the infants fall into sleep by patting, played with them from their perspective and took care of them when they felt unstable or fear about daytime naps, and they interacted with each other in that way.