TY - JOUR

T1 - Assessing quality characteristics of center-based early childhood environments in Germany and Portugal

T2 - A cross-national study

AU - Tietze, Wolfgang

AU - Bairrao, Joaquim

AU - Leal, Teresa Barreiros

AU - Roßbach, Hans-Günther

N1 - Funding Information: This type of center-based provisions is sponsored by the Ministry Funding Information: This study was made possible by a grant from the Investigacao Funding Information: Centers in this category are sponsored by the Ministry Welfare.

PY - 1998/6/1

Y1 - 1998/6/1

N2 - Based on the knowledge that direct assessment of the quality of early childhood educational environments is becoming more and more important, this article deals with a coordinated adaptation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) in Germany and Portugal. The ECERS, developed by Harms and Clifford (1980), is a complex rating scale, comprising 37 items, which is implemented to assess major quality characteristics of early childhood classrooms and has been used quite extensively in the US as well as in other countries. In this article we describe how the scale was adapted and we report selected results of a jointly coordinated comparative study on a sample of 103 early childhood classrooms in Germany and 88 in Portugal. The classrooms were classified according to three different types in each country. In particular, we report the item characteristics of the adapted versions, reliabilities and intercorrelations of the total scale and the apriori-subscales, and results of factor analyses. A one-way ANOVA indicates group differences between the six types of classrooms which can be meaningfully interpreted.

AB - Based on the knowledge that direct assessment of the quality of early childhood educational environments is becoming more and more important, this article deals with a coordinated adaptation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) in Germany and Portugal. The ECERS, developed by Harms and Clifford (1980), is a complex rating scale, comprising 37 items, which is implemented to assess major quality characteristics of early childhood classrooms and has been used quite extensively in the US as well as in other countries. In this article we describe how the scale was adapted and we report selected results of a jointly coordinated comparative study on a sample of 103 early childhood classrooms in Germany and 88 in Portugal. The classrooms were classified according to three different types in each country. In particular, we report the item characteristics of the adapted versions, reliabilities and intercorrelations of the total scale and the apriori-subscales, and results of factor analyses. A one-way ANOVA indicates group differences between the six types of classrooms which can be meaningfully interpreted.

KW - Educational science

KW - cross-national comparisons

KW - early childhood

KW - preschool

KW - quality assessment

KW - Early childhood

KW - Cross-national comparisons

KW - Preschool

KW - Quality assessment

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0032394543&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/BF03173094

DO - 10.1007/BF03173094

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 13

SP - 283

EP - 298

JO - European Journal of Psychology of Education

JF - European Journal of Psychology of Education

SN - 0256-2928

IS - 2

M1 - 283

ER -