Samspillskvalitet mellom ansatte og små barn (1-3 år) i norske barnehager (dagtilbud)

The study investigates the quality of interaction between employees and children in Norwegian kindergarten toddler departments. Quality of interaction means how the adults support children’s emotions, behaviour, learning and language development in the normal day-to-day life of kindergartens.  The research questions are: 1) How is the quality of interaction in Norwegian kindergarten toddler departments measured using CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System) Toddler? 2) What is the correlation between the quality of interaction measured using CLASS Toddler and structural factors such as ownership, organisation, the number of employees in the department with kindergarten teacher education, the number of children in the group and child–adult ratio? 3) What is the correlation between the two interaction domains ‘emotional and behavioural support’ and ‘learning and development support’?

The systematic observations showed that most kindergartens achieved medium to high scores in the domain of emotional and behavioural support. However, the children experienced little support in terms of learning, development and language. Here, the average score was in the upper area of low scores. Emotional and behavioural support was higher when there were fewer children per adult in the toddler departments. Learning and development support was somewhat better in traditional departmental kindergartens compared to family kindergartens. In terms of the other structural conditions, the correlations were non-significant. The results showed a moderate correlation between the two interaction domain scores.

According to the researchers, it is worrying that only around 11% of departments were among the highest scores in both interaction domains, while 50% were among the lowest scores in both domains. The researchers believe that the results show that the interaction between young children and kindergarten employees is not necessarily good enough as it currently stands, and that more knowledge must be acquired about how the quality of interaction can be improved.

The study is based on the observation of normal everyday situations in 106 kindergarten toddler departments in 92 different kindergartens. The children in these departments are 0-3 years old. Using the CLASS Toddler observation method, the quality of interaction between employees and children in the kindergarten toddler departments was measured according to eight interaction dimensions divided into two main domains: ‘emotional and behavioural support’ (relationships between children and adults and the adults’ sensitivity towards the children) and ‘learning and development support’ (mutual interaction in which adults broaden and enrich the children’s focus of attention, thinking and language). Each dimension received a score divided into low quality, medium quality and high quality. Subsequently, an average score was calculated for the toddler department. A linear regression analysis was used to investigate the correlation between quality of interaction and structural factors.

Drugli, M. B. & Berg-Nielsen, T. S. (2019). "Samspillskvalitet mellom ansatte og små barn (1-3 år) i norske barnehager (dagtilbud)" Paideia, (17):37-47.