Preschool care and education: Lessons from the 20th for the 21st Century

This paper offers a review and critique of research carried out over the past 15 to 20 years designed to investigate the effects of various types of day care provision on the development of preschool children. It is argued that in view of the diversity of provision offered in different countries, simple, global, generalisations about the effects ofout‐of‐home, preschool experience on later development can not be sensibly justified. The fact that type and quality of care varies widely within and between countries must be taken into consideration if accurate assessments of the impact of day care on children's social, emotional and intellectual development are to be made. Also, in assessing the effects of care, it is important to recognise and take account of, the relationships between a child's home environment and the characteristics of his or her preschool experience. It is argued that conflicting results from previous studies can best be evaluated in terms of a model which looks at the balance between the quality of a child's home experience and that of his or her day care experience. The paper also discusses new findings which are beginning to emerge from international, comparative research projects on the effects of preschool care, and calls for greater efforts to be made in co‐ordinating cross‐national research in the future.