First year early childhood education students’ beliefs about children in long day child care

It has been suggested, anecdotally, that many early childhood education and care (ECEC) students hold deeply negative views of long day child care and the parents and families that make use of these services. Given that these students will be well qualified to one day be directing/teaching in long day child care services, this negativity is a contradictory, incongruent and troubling thought. This pilot study has sought to provide evidence (or otherwise) for the anecdotal suggestion that students consider full time long day care to be negative and undesirable situation. Furthermore, we are investigating the teaching options we can provide in our preservice teacher education whereby students have the opportunity to develop more critical and thoughtful understandings of parents and child care choices/options.