Outline And Evaluate Research Into The Effects Of Day Care On Social Development Essay
Outline and Evaluate research into the effects of day care on social development
Daycare is regular, temporary separation outside the home environment without the presence of a family member e.g. in nurseries, playgroups, under supervision of child-minders etc. Peer relationships are thought to play an important role in children’s development, for example when a child is left separated from its primary caregiver for the first time, typically when they begin school, around the age of 3 to 4, they are often very unsociable and timid, a sign of fear and un-ease due to being in unfamiliar territory and with different people who they are not associated with.
Shea (1981) conducted a field study of children in their first 10 weeks at school and observed …show more content…
The sample included a range of ethnic groups and social disadvantages. Some of the results from this project also showed that day care could improve peer relations only if it was of high quality, in which case children showed a reduced level of antisocial behaviour and a higher level of sociability with other children. However, results also showed day care was able to increase aggressive behaviour when children spent more than 20 or 40 hours in day care per week. This further increased in children whose carers were constantly changed.
As with many other researches, there are both pros and cons to the EPPE project as well. One liability is that is has only found a correlation between daycare and aggression/peer relations and cannot establish cause and effect. As a result, it is therefore not possible to claim that constantly changing carers causes aggression and that low quality day care causes antisocial behaviour. Instead, other factors such as the child’s life at home could have affected the results. It can also be argued that the project focused too much influences on aggression and peer relations rather than other social
Daycare is regular, temporary separation outside the home environment without the presence of a family member e.g. in nurseries, playgroups, under supervision of child-minders etc. Peer relationships are thought to play an important role in children’s development, for example when a child is left separated from its primary caregiver for the first time, typically when they begin school, around the age of 3 to 4, they are often very unsociable and timid, a sign of fear and un-ease due to being in unfamiliar territory and with different people who they are not associated with.
Shea (1981) conducted a field study of children in their first 10 weeks at school and observed …show more content…
The sample included a range of ethnic groups and social disadvantages. Some of the results from this project also showed that day care could improve peer relations only if it was of high quality, in which case children showed a reduced level of antisocial behaviour and a higher level of sociability with other children. However, results also showed day care was able to increase aggressive behaviour when children spent more than 20 or 40 hours in day care per week. This further increased in children whose carers were constantly changed.
As with many other researches, there are both pros and cons to the EPPE project as well. One liability is that is has only found a correlation between daycare and aggression/peer relations and cannot establish cause and effect. As a result, it is therefore not possible to claim that constantly changing carers causes aggression and that low quality day care causes antisocial behaviour. Instead, other factors such as the child’s life at home could have affected the results. It can also be argued that the project focused too much influences on aggression and peer relations rather than other social