Quality of interactions in child day-care centres: status quo analysis of interaction designs in daily kindergarten routine

Interactions between preschool teachers and children, taking place in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions, have an enormous impact on child development. The quality and quantity of these interactions are crucial. This study aims at observing the actual behaviour of preschool teachers during their interactions with children in daily kindergarten routine under particular consideration of (1) different educational backgrounds and (2) different types of situations as factors of possible influence. A video investigation was conducted in 40 institutions with preschool teachers with different educational training levels, focusing on free-play and snack time as two different situations. Video recordings of these situations with a length of about 15 min each were screened, resulting in a sample of about 1200 min of transliterated video recordings. For the analysis, the video sequences were coded regarding quantitative and qualitative criteria. The results show statistical significance in interaction quality with regard to different situations.