Kindergarten quality and child’s att achment to a pre-school teacher

Dr. Zlatka Cugmas

Summary:  The object of the research was to study the attachment concerning some views of kindergarten quality and the quality of children’s attachment to their pre-school teacher. There were 33 pre-school teachers and pre-school teacher’ assistants (in the following text: pre-school teachers) from kindergartens located in different parts of Slovenia who took part in the research. On the basis of »The Assessment Scale of Child’s Attachment to its Pre-school Teacher« (Cugman 2009), they assessed the quality attachment of 166 children aged from 3 to 6. The scale measures the following samples of attachment: security, resistance, disorganization, avoiding, dependence and confidence. The pre-school teachers answered also particular questions from »The Questionnaire for Professional Workers« (Marjanovič Umek, Fekonja, Kavčič and Poljanšek (ed.) 2002), meant for kindergartens’ self-evaluation. The questions measured the structural, indirect and process level of quality. With the calculations of one-way analyses of variance, we calculated differences in the quality of child’s attachment to its pre-school teacher regarding different answers about kindergarten quality. For the calculation of the connection between the treated variables, we employed Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient. The results showed that children’s safe attachment was positively connected with child’s possibilities of rest and retreat into privacy in kindergarten, pre-school teachers’ satisfaction with work in kindergarten, taking into account child’s needs of nutrition, resting and sleeping in kindergarten. However, it is negatively connected with including children into cleaning up activities in kindergarten, either as a punishment or as praise.