Testing the Vision: Preschool Settings as Places for Meeting,Bonding and Bridging

The OECD (2006 Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care. OECD Publishing: Paris) envisions early childhood education and care settings as meeting places for diverse social groups; places that build social capital. This vision was assessed in a comparison of three preschools types: full‐fee paying, subsidised‐fee and publicly funded. The social composition within each was examined and the connectedness of the children (n = 472) who attended compared. Publicly funded preschools had more socially diverse populations. The quantity of social connectedness did not differ but children in publicly funded preschools described higher quality social relationships. Not all preschool settings are socially diverse but, where they are, the quality of relationships is highest.     

Sociometric methods and difference: a force for good – or yet more harm

This paper offers a critique of sociometrics as a ubiquitous method of measuring social relationships among children in social groups such as school classes. This is important in relation to disability politics and research as the apparently scientific measures are frequently used in the process of labelling children or predisposing the children involved, or others involved with them, to view disabled and other children in particular ways. We open a debate about judgements concerning whether the use of sociometric techniques needs to be better informed by questions about the underpinning normalising frameworks on which they depend, about the connotations of blame associated with particular sociometric statuses, and about the way that research constructs difficulties and reflects an adult agenda, marginalising the voices of (disabled) children. We argue for the value of the transactional turn in understanding the implications of this approach and for highlighting alternative perspectives.     

Estimation of the need for child care in Canada

Finding adequate child care is a serious problem for many Canadian parents. The purpose of this case study is to estimate the need for child care in Canada, including ihc portion of this need that may be hidden. We utilize the Family History Survey conducted by Statistics Canada (1984) to explore patterns of both met and unmet child-care needs, based, in the latter case, on varying assumptions about the degree of parents' desire for child care.     

Mother and Child Reports of Preschool Children's Social Support Networks: Network Correlates of Peer Acceptance

This study examined the relations between characteristics of preschool children's social support networks and peer acceptance. Mothers and their children completed network interviews that assessed structural features of the child's network, the actual performance of supportive behaviors across four support domains (daily maintenance, occasional maintenance, emotional support, recreation), and the perceived closeness of the relationships between children and network members. Mothers tended to identify broader networks than did their children, and both maternal and child reports of the number of males included in the network were significant correlates of peer acceptance. A gender effect was also revealed suggesting that boys' networks included more male members than those of girls whereas girls mentioned more females as network members than did boys. Further analyses indicated that maternal reports of enacted emotional support, network size for emotional and recreational support and perceived closeness to network members were positively associated with peer acceptance measures. Child reports of the number of network members with whom he/she had a ‘special relationship’ and enjoyed spending time were correlated positively with peer acceptance. Multiple regression analyses revealed that network variables accounted for significant proportions of variance in peer acceptance measures.