Children's involvement profiles in daycare centres

SUMMARY The concept of involvement and the corresponding training package for the observation of children's involvement in daycare centres were developed by Laevers and colleagues in Belgium (University of Leuven). In the first part of this paper some characteristic features of this approach are discussed: its position in relation to similar theoretical concepts and some methodological and practical aspects of the involvement observation scales as a tool for practitioners. In the second part the findings of a study in German daycare centres (28 classes, 8 daycare centres in Bavaria) are presented. More than 600 3- to 7-year-old children were systematically observed and assessed with the Leuven Activities Scale, which lists 23 different activities that are commonly offered in preschool settings. Observation of all children in class with this scale revealed specific involvement profiles for different groups of children: the prevalence of sex-typed activity preferences and involvement rates, lower involvement rates of ethnic minority children especially in language-related activities, comparatively low involvement rates in most activities for young children in age-mixed groups. Our findings show that it is important to observe all children in class with the Activities Scale and not merely individual children or subgroups. Practitioners will gain a complete and precise picture of the whole class and become aware of the unevenly distributed educational and developmental chances of specific groups of children in relation to curriculum activities. Such information will help practitioners in developing specific centre-based interventions and curricular goals for different groups of children — an important aspect of quality in early childhood education.