AARE 98 Conference, Adelaide

PAPER-NIV98344 "An Australian study of professional male child caregivers' beliefs, values and attitudes to childcare."

(c)1998 Louise Niva, M.Ed (Res) student, deLissa Institute of Early Childhood

& Family Studies, Magill Campus, University of South Australia.

Home: 8431 5625 Uni: 83024389 Email- lniva@metropolis.net.au

P.O.Box 3307, Norwood South Australia 5067

Principal Supervisor: Prof. Philip Gammage, Research Chair

deLissa Institute of Early Childhood & Family Studies

Associate Supervisor: Ann Veale, Head of School (retired)

DeLissa Institute of Early Childhood & Family Studies

Abstract

While the socialising influence of parents and teachers on young children has been well researched, the ex. Sc. (Child Dev.), DeLissa Institute of Early Childhood &Family Studies, University of South Australia, Magill, Adelaide.\par Oppenheim, A. (1966). Questionnaire design and attitude measurement. London: Heinemann.\par Peet, S.H. (1995). Parental perceptions of the use of internal sources of information about children's development. Early Education and Development, 6, 2, 145-154.\par Perrett, R. (1988). Girls and boys. Australian early childhood resource booklets no. 3. Watson: Australian Early Childhttitude scale will be developed that may eventually assist in supporting self-reflective practice within formal child care settings, and in the early childhood education and training of caregivers. The results of a 1996 pilot study will be presented, along with an outline of proposed research methods and any results at this mid point in the study.

Introduction

As a contribution to the need for greater understanding of the overall impact of formal, centre-based child care on child development, research is needed into the childcare attitudes that caregivers may be importing into child care settings.

Centre-based child caregivers, as members of a 'sector' of early childhood education, have been the subject of research in Australia only in the past 10 years. The overwhelming predominance of women as employees in this field has meant the few men who venture into it (a meagre 2% nationally) have consistently been statistically subsumed in this research (Clyde, 1989; Rodd & Clyde, 1990). Consequently, this study aims to redress the apparent lack of sociological data on male child caregivers, specifically with regard to an important

unknown: their personal and professional beliefs, values and attitudes regarding how best to provide care for children in the 0-3 age bracket.

Male child caregivers have not gone totally unresearched. Some overseas studies have illuminated the unique employment experiences male caregivers accumulate, arising from the collegial misapprehensions, social prejudices and career limitations that many of these men endure (Robinson & Hobson, 1978; Seifert, 1973, 1986). In Australia, men in the role of caregiving fathers have been a preferred focus of early childhood research in the past 20 years, particularly for their influence on child development (Russell, 1980a, 1982a, Grbich, 1987, 1994).

The foundation for this current research topic rests on a small South Australian pilot study (Niva, 1996), which involved in-depth interviews with six centre-based male child caregivers in Adelaide on the issues affecting their professional efficacy. Results showed clearly that these men had never before been asked questions aimed at exploring their personal orientations to child-rearing beliefs, values and worklife experiences, an opportunity they welcomed at the time. Furthermore, this sample appeared to have no in-service process available to promote self reflection as a key tool for enhancing self awareness of beliefs and and challenging 'on-board' assumptions, with a view to improving the quality of their caregiving practices.

Research into personal beliefs and values and their interrelationship with attitudes and behaviour, is extensive (Edwards, 1957; Triandis, 1971). Furthermore, most of this century has seen great interest develop in the direct and indirect psychological and social factors that underlie and influence the socialisation process, which has also been construed as the 'social construction of reality and knowledge' (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Considerable work has also focused on the role of parents, teachers and peers in this interactive process. However, there appears to be minimal attention given to the potential for professional child caregivers (male or female) to impart their personal beliefs and values through their deliberate or involuntary attitudes to childcare to the children within their responsibility.

This paper presents minimal work-in-progress, as the data-gathering phase of the study has only recently begun.

Definitions

In focusing on 'professional male child caregivers', a distinction is drawn between the 'informal childcare' provided by men who look after children as fathers/guardians at home, and 'formal centre-based childcare' provided by those who are employed in the early childhood education/care field.

The term 'caregiving' is defined as the hourly-paid monitoring and physical care and developmental support given to children who attend a private or community-managed child care centre, also known as a 'long daycare centre' within the literature.

Adult child caregivers in South Australia may be qualified or untrained, fulltime, permanent parttime, casual employees, relief staff or volunteers. Childcare qualifications include the Bachelor of Early Childhood Education and the TAFE Certificate in Children's Service. Students of these courses are to be found in many child care centres on 'practicum' and 'placement' for hands-on experience.

Research limitations

Reciprocity

This study will not undertake to examine any reciprocal effects on caregivers' beliefs, values and attitudes that the interactivity of the caregiver-child relationship may be producing.

Reflective strategies

The impact of any specific self reflective strategies that caregivers may be currently employing regarding their childcare beliefs and values will not be documented within the parameters of this research study.

Background: 1996 pilot study on early childhood education issues

In Australia, men are overwhelmingly under-represented in employment involving the professional care of young children. The recent pilot study in South Australia (Niva, 1996), involving a telephone count of all private Adelaide metropolitan child care centres only (excluding community-based centres), showed that just over 80 men (5.4%) and 1400 women (94.6%) were employed as primary contact staff in these particular centres. Victorian studies confirm this extremely low gender ratio (Clyde, 1989a; Rodd & Clyde, 1989).

In the South Australian pilot study, six male child caregivers were interviewed in depth and preliminary qualitative data suggest that these men encounter and deal with a number of uniquely gender-based, personal, professional, ethical and social issues on a daily basis. For example, these male caregivers reported having been the object of doubt regarding their 'natural' ability to look after children, and deep suspicion of possessing an inherent predilection to paedophilia, both from female colleagues and their private social contacts.

These overlapping issues have been reported both in Australia and overseas (Clyde,1989, 1994; Prendergast, 1990; Robinson, 1978), and appear to affect the character and quality of adult-child interactions between professional male child care workers and their young charges. For example, although the men generally believed in the importance of displaying

warmth and empathy towards the children, they were often prevented from physical contact by endemic suspicion for their motives (Niva, 1996).

The extent to which male caregivers' own parenting experiences have shaped their attitudes to childcare may be an important element in this research, particularly the extent of their awareness of these influences. In the pilot study, several men described aspects of their experience of parenting or childrearing, either from their own parents or in raising their own children. It was apparent that these memories were still influential in their lives as an 'experience bank' upon which to draw in dealing with the young children in their current care.

It is significant to note that at no stage in the interviews did any of the men display an awareness of the potency of this prior childcare experience as a key factor in shaping their present caregiving beliefs and attitudes. In spite of this, the men expressed an interest in influencing children's development in some way. This influence took a number of forms, such as teaching correct English, manners, self discipline, or encouraging children's keenness to learn new skills.

Literature review

(Please note further suggestions for extending the review are sought)

A number of overlapping fields of research literature are directly relevant to the focus of this study. The full list of titles is attached, and only several areas are discussed briefly below.

I would greatly welcome any suggestions for inclusion. Especially important is any information on recent or current studies that might align with mine. Please advise anyone so involved to make direct contact by phone, post or email.

The socialisation of children

According to Berger and Luckmann (1966), it is through primary socialisation from birth that the child's "first world is constructed. Its peculiar quality of firmness is to be accounted for ... by the inevitability of the individual's relationship to his very first significant others" from which the child builds a personal world which is "conducive to confidence not only in...significant others but in their definitions of the situation" (p. 155). Furthermore, through the process of internalization, a child develops a self that is a "reflected entity, reflecting the attitudes first taken by significant others" towards her or him. This process involves the adoption of roles, attitudes and the whole social context that provides a "designated social location" (p. 153).

Within the adjoining 'social locations' of the family, formal child care and school, men teach and care for children against a backdrop of changing community attitudes to gender-based occupations and roles. In all these early childhood settings, men can be and are cast as 'significant others' in children's lives, as they contribute to varying degrees to the primary and secondary socialisation processes all children experience. It is also possible that their diminished presence in formal child care settings only serves to heighten their influence on young children.

In the light of this potential for influencing children's intellectual, moral and social development, it is imperative that attention be given to the caregiving beliefs, values and attitudes that prevail among male child caregivers in their role as significant others in young children's early care and education. Moreover, with this level of early socializational and developmental influence comes a responsibility invested in each child caregiver, both familial and non-familial, to bring the extent and character of such influences out of the domain of unexamined assumptions and into the realm of critical self reflection.

Critical self reflection

Substantial research has been undertaken into developing strategies for enhancing the awareness and self assessment, termed 'critical self reflection', of the influence of individual beliefs and values on attitude and behaviour. Within the field of professional development for teachers, for example, interest has been intensifying in the emergence of the critically 'reflective practitioner' (Schon, 1983, 1987) who is committed to "step off the moving path of actions" to look at them closely

(Bamberger, 1991:44).

It is important to point out that the prime focus of reflective practice since Schon's pioneering work has been the development of problem-solving strategies such as 'action research' to engage the practitioner in a spiralling process of self reflection on events, behaviour, collegial feedback and corrective action toward improved teaching strategies and practice. However, this current study is primarily exploratory and descriptive and seeks to document the range and nature of practitioners' beliefs and assumptions and does not have as its immediate aim any direct impact on practitioner performance.

What potential this research may have for the development of a self reflective strategy for early childhood education students and practitioners will be made available to pre-service and in-service professional development programs at some later date. To what extent this relates to current requirements for child care centre accreditation will be assessed.

For example, most South Australian child care centres can be described as multi-cultural microcosms, where it is likely that cultural differences will arise in attitudes to child care between staff and parents. In-service processes are promoted within the Australian child

care accreditation process that will encourage "question or reflection" on these "prescriptions for conduct" (Kitwood, 1983:23), to ensure that any conflicting beliefs and values are acknowledged and children from other cultural backgrounds do not experience major social dislocation in attending long day care.

Values development

According to Kitwood (1983), children receive "patterns of attitude and action from those [people] who are older, generally without question or reflection. The culture contains many beliefs or assumptions about what the world is like, and also many prescriptions for conduct, which are usually learned at the level of action before these is a 'conscious realisation' " (p.23). This study will investigate the type and nature of these 'patterns of attitude' in a specific group of 'older people' who spend substantial amounts of time with other people's very young children.

In addition, how some male caregivers may be challenging assumptions (Goodnow, 1988; Mills & Rubin, 1990) about their childcare beliefs and values and how that is translated into attitudes employed in dealing with children on a daily basis, is of additional interest.

Adult-child relationships

Fathers as caregivers

To date, considerable sociological research attention has been directed to defining the factors affecting the quality of care provided by biological fathers to their children (Russell, 1980, 1993). This allied research field may provide some insight into male caregivers' paternal attitudes and behaviour in caring for young children as a basis for investigating men's beliefs and values relating to professional child caregiving.

Day Care

As part of a wider social backdrop to this study, attention will be paid to the development and implementation of the present Australian child care accreditation standards and professional ethics relating childcare practices, and caregiver/parent interactions (McCartney et al, 1985; McKim, 1993; Smith, 1988).

Methodology

As this appears to be a relatively uncharted area of research, this study is structured in three stages that employ both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Miles and Huberman (1984) support the use of quantitative methods in social research as an "essential way of verifying impressions that have been formed on an intuitive basis" in qualitative social research (in Layder, 1995,111). These stages and their results are intended to be

complementary, and this methodological triangulation will support this combined approach, while focusing on the "lived experiences and practical actions of everyday life" (Van Manen, 1990:4) as reflections of the beliefs and values that male child caregivers may hold.

Because of the newness of this research focus, the formation of any clear-cut hypothesis about the participants or potential findings prior to the data gathering activities is considered inappropriate.

Research methods

The self reflective researcher

As a qualitative researcher, I must maintain a personally self reflective stance that ensures the potential influences of my presence, interactions and assumptions are factored into all dialogues with my participants. This is the 'human-as-instrument' concept suggested by Lincoln and Guba (1985), which proposes that the complexity of the observer is necessary to match that of the participants.

Stage 1-Initial qualitative research

Focus group -subjects

Using an opportunity sample approach, a focus group of 10-12 male and female child caregivers and educators will be selected from metropolitan and country private and community-managed child care centres based on several key demographic criteria. Only fulltime and parttime, qualified and unqualified employed males and females with primary child contact will be included.

Originally, it had been intended to exclude owners of child care centres, however due to the very real lack of male caregivers working directly with children, male owners and directors will form part of the research population. Students on work experience placements or Jobstart contracts will be excluded.

The inclusion of female caregivers at this stage is seen as essential to ensure all aspects of the topic are investigated that may be generically relevant to most, if not all, caregivers' experiences. By virtue of their predominance in numbers, they are likely to form the baseline of beliefs and attitudes currently prevalent in centre-based child care .

Focus Group composition

Each Focus Group will be composed of 4 male caregivers, 2 female caregivers who work with male caregivers, and 2 female caregivers who do not work with males.

No two participants will be drawn from the same centre in order to ensure a rich cross-feed of experience, and to avoid any potential constraints that may arise between colleagues.

Focus group-data collection

Participants will be brought together voluntarily for one two-hour, free-answer discussion on topics dealing with their beliefs about their caregiving role in children's lives, the values they hold regarding bringing up children, and the attitudes they have to children and childcare practices.

The researcher will facilitate the discussion and use a semi-structured interview outline to present categories of common childcare practices as general topics to encourage wide-ranging exploration and deliberation of beliefs, values and attitudes.

The focus group discussions will (1) explore the origins, complexities and ramifications of childcare attitudes in order to define more precisely what needs to be measured; and (2) elicit vivid expressions and descriptions of these attitudes from this representative group for use as statements in the attitude scale (Oppenheim, 1966).

The focus groups will select key issues that will give rise to 20-25 specific statements to be used as the basis for the construction of an attitude scale/questionnaire.

The focus group discussions will be recorded on audio cassette tapes with participants' permission. Transcripts from the audio tapes will be transcribed onto computer hard and floppy disk for storage.

Groups held for convenience

Because Adelaide is so extended in its physical layout, 3 focus groups will be held about 2-3 weeks apart, with northern, southern and central suburban child care centres as hosts, to facilitate easier attendance after hours. An evening meal will be supplied as a further incentive to attend and in lieu of direct payment to participants.

Progressive refinment of Focus Group questions

The second and third focus groups will afford the opportunity to refine the nature of the seeing questions that are intended to get the discussions underway. This is inteded to ensure that the discussions elicit the specific information sought.

Stage 2-Quantitative research

Attitude scale-construction

An attitude scale will be developed, targeting childcare beliefs, values and attitudes in professional child caregivers (non-gender specific), and incorporating a number of statements to which a Likert-type summated rating scale can be applied to elicit graded responses regarding personal opinions. Statements are likely to fall into 'domains' or areas of interest, for example, beliefs about disciplining children or giving physical affection. Domain-specific statements will be spread across the attitude scale to reduce the possibility of eliciting a "response set" (Oppenheim, 1966:117).

The pool of attitude statements obtained from the focus group will be classified individually as either favourable or unfavourable, and approximately half of the statements to be included in the attitude scale will be drawn from each of these classifications. The response to each statement will be limited to any one of five Likert-type categories: "strongly agree", "agree", "undecided", "disagree" or "strongly disagree" (Edwards, 1957).

These categories of response are then weighted (or scored) so that the overall response made by individuals with the most favourable attitudes will always have the highest positive score. Weightings are as follows: "strongly agree = 5", "agree"= 3, "undecided"= 2, "disagree"= 1 and "strongly disagree = 0". In this manner, the highest and lowest scores will indicate the most strongly held opinions, which may form the basis for selecting several participants for Stage 3 of the study.

Attitude scale -pilot -respondents

This instrument will be piloted first to check the validity of the questions. A small number of female and male child caregivers randomly selected from the unit population will be asked to complete the attitude scale prior to its application to the broader child caregiver population. Those caregivers who participated in the focus groups will not be excluded from this pilot phase.

Attitude scale-pilot data analysis and revision

Each respondent's individual item scores will be summated. The differences between the mean scores of the highest 25% and lowest 25% of summated scores will be used as the

basis for selecting the final attitude statements (relating to childcare practices) required for the attitude scale/questionnaire. In this way, responses can be seen to be most obviously related, either favourably or unfavourably, to relevant issues pertaining to the topic. Middle-range responses, in particular, "uncertain" are not expected to give a clear picture of the attitudes to the issues under attention. At this point, indistinct and ineffective statements will be discarded or modified.

Attitude scale-repiloting modified statements

As Oppenheim (1966) suggests, the revised attitude statements will be piloted once more, to counter the possibility that "reworking may have introduced new difficulties or biases" (p.26). He also suggests piloting all accompanying material, such as the recruiting letter and information sheet. For this purpose, a second small sample of respondents from the unit population will be recruited on a voluntary and random basis.

Attitude scale-respondents -main survey and data analysis

The final attitude scale will be posted to all qualified and unqualified male caregivers employed fulltime or parttime in private and community-managed child care centres in South Australia. It is expected that the summated ratings will provide a number of responses that do not fit an overall pattern of opinions. These will form the basis of the third and final qualitative step in this research.

Reliability

The reliability of the attitude scores will be obtained by correlating scores for the odd-numbered statements with those for the even-numbered statements. According to Edwards (1957), the reliability coefficient for the summated-ratings method can be expected to be above .85.

Validity

An attitude scale should measure specifically what it is sets out to measure, however, because of the complexity inherent in the range of potential variables that can influence attitudes, Oppenheim suggests that at present, "there is no way of making sure that an attitude scale is valid" (1966:122). This will be discussed in greater depth at a later time.

Stage 3-Final qualitative research

In-depth interviews -respondents

Several male child caregivers whose attitude scale responses are atypical will be invited to participate in an in-depth, 1-2 hour individual interview.

In-depth interviews -data collection

The interviews will again be audiotaped with respondents' permission, and transcriptions of these interviews will be checked directly with the respondents for accuracy before analysis.

In-depth interviews -data analysis

Glaser and Strauss' (1967) 'constant comparative method', as developed in their grounded theory, will be used to analyse these data in order to allow the broadest range of issues, themes and concepts to arise from the detail gathered. This interpretive-descriptive process of analysis is aimed at discovering patterns through extensive dialogue, careful documentation, and thoughtful analysis of the data (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). The NUD.IST qualitative data analysis program will be used to identify and aggregate units of meaning into relevant themes and patterns of understanding, and to organise the management of this multi-layered information.

It is possible that these atypical responses will provide greater insight into the character and extent of the childcare attitudes and any underlying value systems that male caregivers bring to bear on their professional practice.

Limitations to developing an attitude scale

This study rests on an underlying assumption that there is such a thing as a stable "true" attitude that can be detected, defined and described. However, many subtle variables can interfere with this hope, such as the form and wording of the attitude scale, the context in which it is administered, or simply the prevailing mood of the respondent. As Oppenheim (1966) points out, this method does not employ an external criterion group with known attitude characteristics, so all results will be referenced internally initially.

Future practical application of the child caregiver attitude scale

In order to establish accurate statistics for the number of women and men providing professional centre-based child care, every centre in South Australia has been contacted by phone by the researcher within a 3-week period in October/November 1998.

The subsequent conversations with child care directors all over the state have established an almost total support and interest in the research study and the potential practical results it is hoped to achieve:

Staff selection instrument

It is likely that the attitude scale will have a specific function for directors employing new staff, namely to obtain an 'attitude profile' of applicants before they are engaged as employees or volunteers. Knowing what a potential staff member thinks and feels about very young children's upbringing and caregivers' roles in children's lives, may facilitate directors' effort to build an effective caregiving team. The great majority of directors consider this to be a useful outcome of the research.

In-service staff development

The potential for enhancement of pre-service and in-service training of child caregivers toward greater sensitivity in professional practice is also a significant feature of this study's long-term aims. It is hoped the resultant attitude scale will prove useful as a tool for alerting early childhood education students and practitioners to the presence and influence of on-board child care beliefs and values, how these impact on workplace attitudes and practices, and the importance of critical self reflection as a permanent feature of their professional lives. Most directors have expressed their interest the implications this has for facilitating positive exchanges between staff, parents and management committee members.

Stakeholders

An important preliminary step in this research has been to discuss its aims and parameters with a number of organisations directly related to the child care sector. These have included DETE Children's Services Office in Adelaide, representatives of local and national child care associations, a local TAFE, and a wide range of early childhood education consultants and staff. The broader perspectives many people have offered have proven very timely, and in some cases, have assisted in avoiding duplication of some existing research work. Ultimately the real stakeholders-very young children in care-are the intended beneficiaries of this research.

Note to international website visitors:

As this is work-in-progress which is expected to be complete by the end of 1999, contributions in the form of comments, advice, constructive criticism and suggestions are most welcome. Please forward your ideas, concerns, experiences to

lniva@metropolis,net.au or phone (61)-8-84315625.

Researcher's background and qualifications

Louise Niva is currently a fulltime Master of Education (Research) student with the deLissa Institute of Early Childhood & Family Studies, Magill Campus, University of South Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science in Adult & Community Education and a Graduate Diploma in Child Development, and has been studying fulltime since 1993. Louise has many

years' worklife experience in Public Relations and Marketing management positions with private and public organisations, prior to establishing her 13-year career counselling practice. She combines this with professional and informal education in counselling and training adults and adolescents, and over 30 years in parenting a large blended family (including using child care) to form the practical knowledge base for her current research.

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