Family Child Care Educators’ Perspectives on Quality: Implications for Contextually Grounded Measurement

This qualitative study explored U.S. family child care (FCC) educators’ definitions of high-quality practice to inform a contextually situated approach to quality measurement. Nineteen virtual focus groups were conducted with 95 FCC educators from 20 U.S. states, including Spanish-speaking participants. Research Findings: Educators described quality as a holistic, relational construct encompassing 12 dimensions that grouped into three major themes: quality as relational and sustained over time, quality as enacted through everyday learning and caregiving experiences, and quality as sustained by educator well-being and professional practice. Participants frequently noted ways typical quality measures and quality improvement systems fail to capture these integrated aspects of FCC practice. Practice or Policy: Results suggest that quality measurement in FCC should account for how relational, instructional, caregiving, and administrative dimensions of practice are integrated in home-based settings. More broadly, the findings underscore the importance of incorporating educators’ perspectives when defining and assessing quality across ECE contexts.