The purpose of this study was to examine safety environment in daycare centers and how caregivers looked at safety education geared toward young children. It's specifically meant to find out the general characteristics of caregivers and daycare center...
The purpose of this study was to examine safety environment in daycare centers and how caregivers looked at safety education geared toward young children. It's specifically meant to find out the general characteristics of caregivers and daycare centers, assess safety environment, look into how much safety education was provided to young children, and finally identify the necessity of safety education and caregiver needs for related training, in an effort to serve as a basis for more successful caregiver training courses and better supplementary education for existing caregivers so that they could be more safety- conscious.
The subjects in this study were 150 caregivers from daycare centers in the city of Jinju. A survey was conducted to collect data from August 1 through 30, 2002.
The collected data were analyzed with SPSS WIN 10.0 program, and t-test, ANOVA, Duncan's multiple range test, and x² test were employed.
The findings of this study were as below:
First, as a result of investigating safety accident causes and place where it took place, the most common cause was hitting, scratching or biting that occurred during interaction between young children. The safety accident cause and place were significantly different according to the daycare center founder, class size and location. In national, public and private daycare centers, safety accidents took place mostly in the care rooms, but outdoor playground was the major place in the corporation daycare centers where safety accident occurred. In the event of the daycare centers with five classes or located in gun-region, safety accidents took place mainly at outdoor playground.
Second, regarding safety environment, indoor safety environment was somewhat inferior to outdoor one. In particular, the restroom environment was the worst.
Third, as for safety education, young children were well educated about street crossing, walking and the use of the restroom and playground, but they didn't sufficiently learn about how to protect themselves from being lost, being kidnapped, fire or food poisoning, despite the importance of these things.
Fourth, concerning the need for safety education for preschoolers, the caregivers who were older and had a higher teaching career felt more need for that. As to connections between the feature of the daycare centers and need for safety education, the caregivers from the daycare centers that were corporation, had five classes or located in gun-region called for more safety education.
Fifth, in regard to their need for training in safety education field, they wanted to receive education about first-aid treat and the use of amusement facilities.