The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between children's ecological background and their adjustment to child-care centers. To serve the purpose, a variety of different levels of ecological variables were considered in this study, i...
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between children's ecological background and their adjustment to child-care centers. To serve the purpose, a variety of different levels of ecological variables were considered in this study, including children's sex, ages, sex sibling, parents' occupation, teachers' experience, and so on. The followings are the research questions raised in this study.
1) Is there any relation between children's temperament and their adjustment to child-care centers?
2) Is there any relation between children's home environment and their adjustment to child-care centers?
3) May children show different levels of adjustment to child-care centers, depending on their sex and ages?
4) May children show different levels of adjustment to child-care centers, depending on parents' occupation or teachers experiences?
5) Could it be possible to explain or predict the problems of children's adjustment to child-care centers, based upon their ecological background.
The subjects of this study were 434 parents and 32 teachers of 3-5 year-olds who were attending in child-care centers in Busan.
In order to measure children's temperament, this study employed Temperament Rating Scale (TRS) developed by Chun (1993). Data for home environment were obtained by using HOME (Lee and Jang, 1982). In addition, the modified version of Adjustment to School Scale (Won, 1990) was used to evaluate the degree of children's adjustment to child-care centers.
The results of this study have raised at least two critical points. First, children have shown significant differences in the degree of adjustment to child-care centers, depending upon their ecological background. Second, among the ecological variables considered here, sex, ages, temperament, and teachers' teaching experience were found to have more significant effects than others on children's adjustment to child-care centers.