Research Report on the International Validation Study “Parents’ and educators’ ratings of quality criteria for childcare facilities”

Assuring pedagogical quality in publicly administered childcare facilities poses a challenge in many countries worldwide. Quality assurance in this context typically takes the form of legal directives on the federal and/or local level (laws, financial directives and other forms of regulations). However, this approach has been of only limited success, as numerous empirical studies show. It does not ensure a satisfactorily high level of pedagogical quality in all childcare facilities.
In the past two to three decades, novel quality assurance approaches such as quality seals and certifications that directly examine pedagogical quality in individual childcare facilities have been developed across the world. However, these are based on different understandings of quality and different quality criteria.
Against the backdrop of these developments, a multi-country study was conducted in 2018-2019 to investigate which criteria different groups of actors (particularly parents and educators) rate as how important for childcare facilities’ quality and what commonalities and potentially also differences can be identified across countries. The study included a comprehensive criteria validation survey in nine countries: Austria (AU), Chile (CL), China (CN), Denmark (DA), Germany (GE), Norway (NO), Russia (RU), Ukraine (UA) and Vietnam (VI). The study was initiated and the first data collection phase coordinated by pädquis® under the direction of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Tietze.1
The present research report discusses how this criteria validation study was planned and implemented and presents key initial findings both across and within countries as well as in international comparison.