In press for David Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers. © 2004 by Sage.

Nursery and Preschool Education

by Kelvin L. Seifert, Faculty of Education,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba,
CANADA R3T 2N2

The terms nursery and preschool are used interchangeably to refer to part-time, center-based programs with a focus on education or socialization of young children. For convenience and conciseness, this article uses only the term nursery to refer to programs of this type. It does not discuss nursery programs that are full-time, since these are more often called child care or day care, and are discussed elsewhere in this volume.

By providing extended access to peers and to planned experiences at an impressionable time of life, nursery programs can potentially influence children’s overall development, hopefully in good ways. This article summarizes research about this possibility. It begins, however, by describing the nature and extent of nursery programs, followed by briefly explaining their historical origins, and then by describing current issues in nursery programming.

NATURE AND EXTENT OF NURSERY AND PRESCHOOL

Characteristics of Nursery and Preschool Like children attending full-time child care, children served by nursery programs are usually three- and four-years-old. In a nursery program, however, a child usually attends only two to four hours per day, for three to five half-days per week, and for eight to ten months per year. Depending on the program, a child typically encounters a mixture of "curriculum" and social experience. The former tends to focus on oral language development and/or pre-literacy skills, goals that are often justified as preparation for elementary school. The social experience of nursery school tends to consist of a mixture of group games (e.g. "Simon Says") and freely chosen play organized individually or in small groups. The social experiences are often justified as fostering self-confidence and social skills. As noted below, however, the proper balance of education and socialization is a continuing issue for educators, developmental psychologists, and parents.

Extent and Distribution of Nursery and Preschool Programs In the 1980s in the United States, about 30% of three- and four-year-olds attended some sort of part-time nursery or preschool program, and by the end of the century the proportion had risen to about 50% across the nation as a whole. The proportion has risen faster than average among Afro-American families (to about 60%), and slower among Hispanic families (currently holding at about 35%). Around the world, rates of nursery attendance correlate strongly with median family income and educational level, with rates varying from virtually 100% in France, Sweden, and Japan to virtually 0% in India and most of Africa. Among the economically developed nations, therefore, the United States ranks relatively low in nursery school attendance. Its programs are also more diverse than other developed nations, and less well funded and coordinated by national authorities and policies. These facts probably contribute to the ongoing concerns and debates in the United States about the quality and impact of nursery and preschool on children’s development.

ORIGINS OF MODERN NURSERY AND PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS

Nursery education has philosophical roots in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European thinkers such as Comenius and Rousseau, who in various ways emphasized the goodness of young children and their inherent capacity to learn. The first actual programs in North America drew heavily from the pedagogical recommendations of Freiderich Froebel, a German educator who published detailed curricula prescribing specific goals and activities for young children, and specific ways for adults to teach them. As the number of Froebelian programs increased, they soon diversified in character, with some becoming more child-centered or "developmentally appropriate" than others. Their clientele also diversified, with some programs deliberately serving children of the poor, like the full-time child-care centers that emerged in the twentieth century. But other nurseries served primarily the well-off middle-class. Debates were soon underway, therefore, about how child-centered nursery education should be, and about whom they should properly serve. As noted below, these issues continue to this day.

Nursery programs became gradually, if erratically, more widespread in North America beginning in the 1920s, along with the growth of full-time child care centers and popularization of kindergarten in public schools. Compared to child-care centers and kindergartens, nurseries were more often funded by an eclectic combination of government initiatives and private funding, but with comparatively more of the latter. Many programs began as teacher training institutes or as university-based "lab schools" for programs of child studies. These often focused more on charting, explaining, and supporting children’s development, than on teaching school-like skills. The emphasis and sponsorship differentiated them both from school-based kindergartens, which operated in a more curriculum-focused context, and from full-time centers, which existed to serve parents’ needs for child care as well as to serve children’s needs. The part-time, privately funded status common among nurseries, furthermore, tended to position them to serve middle-class families, especially those in which one parent (usually a mother) was not employed outside the home.

By the middle part of the twentieth century, "nursery school" tended to connote an enrichment experience for children for families for those whose circumstances allowed such participation. The connotation contained a grain of truth, but was not (and still is not) entirely accurate. In the 1960s, for example, the American federal government launched Project Head Start as part of its "war on poverty" in the United States. The Project provided nursery-like programs for thousands of pre-kindergarten children and their families. Unlike the majority of traditional nursery programs, however, Head Start drew its clientele primarily from low-income communities. It also aimed, among other goals, at teaching pre-academic skills (especially language arts) that would prepare children for school and protect them from school failure.

ONGOING ISSUES ABOUT NURSERY AND PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

Since its beginning, the nature and purpose of nursery education has been debated vigorously. Much of the discussion relates to the general issue of how much programs should be child-centered compared to instructional or curriculum-centered. Advocates of child-centered programming favor ample time for play and self-chosen activities. They also tend to emphasize the social development of children—learning to cooperate with others, to feel self-confident, and the like. Fostering these qualities, they argue, helps to insure academic success later, when children enter elementary school. Advocates of instructional or curriculum-centered views are less concerned about general development and give more priority to learning the skills that children need for kindergarten and elementary school. They sometimes argue that academic preparedness develops children’s confidence as a byproduct, and therefore also develops children’s social skills. The debate is useful in clarifying the choices and dilemmas faced by practicing nursery teachers, but it is also artificial in the sense that most teachers make reasonable efforts to attend to a variety of developmental needs—social, cognitive, and physical.

Sometimes the child-versus-curriculum issue is framed simply as the question of whether nursery programs should provide experiences that are truly intentional and planned, or are simply safe and responsive to children’s initiatives. When framed in this way, part-time nursery programs have tended to position themselves as more "intentional" than full-time programs. By being part-time, it is argued, teachers can devise more focused, thoughtful enrichment for children—whether the enrichment has an instructional or a child-centered character. Others argue, however, that the distinction between part-time and full-time programming is not at all clear-cut; it is possible both to be "merely custodial: in a part-time program and to be "intentionally educational" in a full-time program. The distinction may contribute, furthermore, to unfortunate stereotypes of full-time child care as an inherently inferior service, socially or developmentally.

Underlying this debate is an ethical issue of social policy: how much should nursery and preschool programs serve families with low incomes, compared to serving families with middle or high incomes? Because families with lower incomes are statistically more likely to be headed by a single parent, they are more likely to need child care that is full-time, as well as to need financial assistance to pay for it. Since governments (at all levels) and community agencies end up providing some of the assistance, nursery education and child care becomes a public (i.e. political) issue. In the United States, the debate has been more protracted than elsewhere, perhaps because of its large economic and cultural diversity and because of its philosophical traditions individual self-reliance.

EFFECTS OF NURSERY AND PRESCHOOL

Several large and carefully designed evaluations of early childhood programs, including nursery programs, have converged on several conclusions about the effects of organized programs for young children. The conclusions can be summarized as follows:

1. Well-implemented programs tend to benefit children from low-income or "at risk" families more than they benefit children from middle-income families.
2. The specific curriculum or approach used by a program makes little difference in the outcomes of the program, as long as the program is implemented thoughtfully or planfully.
3. During a program or for about one year thereafter, well-implemented programs produce significant gains in children’s tested intelligence quotient, school achievement, and social adjustment as rated by their teachers.
4. In the long term (as much as twenty years following the program), children from well-implemented programs continue showing gains in school achievement, are significantly less likely to need special education, and are less likely to engage in anti-social activities (e.g. juvenile delinquency).
5. The markers of quality and success of a program vary with the cultural context. For example, high quality in the United States is marked by higher levels of staff training and smaller class size. High quality in Japan, France, and Italy, however, is unrelated to levels of staff training, and quality programs routinely have class sizes that would be considered unprofessional in the United States or even illegal.