The Complex and Dynamic Nature of Quality in Early Care and Educational Programs: A Case for Chaos. (Research Into Practice).

The Complex and Dynamic Nature of Quality in Early Care and Educational Programs: A Case for Chaos--Buell & Cassidy. (Research Into Practice)

The authors believe that a reductionistic approach to investigating the variables associated with quality in early care and educational settings fails to capture the complex process involved in creating quality programming. Because the variables are decontextualized, the resulting policies offer little hope of long-term gains. In contrast, Chaos theory can be useful in understanding the manner in which complex human systems, a category that subsumes early care and educational programs, function. Chaos theory is less a unified theory and more a collection of tenets concerning the behaviors of complex nonlinear systems. The implications of how Chaos theory can be used as a guide in developing policy aimed at improving the quality of early care and education settings are described. The authors begin by reviewing past research that examines the factors used to develop policy aimed at increasing quality. These factors included: staff-to-child ratios, staff education, teacher turnover, administrators' experience, a nd effectiveness in curriculum planning. Teachers' wages, education, and specialized training were described as the most important factors in determining among poor, mediocre, and good child care centers.

The authors describe how these initiatives are too narrow and unable to sustain gains. They go on to demonstrate how early care and education programs reflect many characteristics of Chaotic systems, including: 1) decomposability, 2) nonlinearity/nonpredictability, 3) sensitivity to initial conditions, 4) recursive symmetries between scales, 5) feedback mechanisms, and 6) the existence of attractors. Given these descriptions, the authors establish early care and education programs as indicative of nonlinear systems. Finally, recommendations for policy are made by applying the logic of Chaos. The authors contend that if one wants to ensure a consistent range of quality in a complex system, the question to consider is not what isolated factors of the system should be improved. Rather, in order to lessen turbulence and increase the consistency of high quality services to children and families, the parameters of the system that need controlling must be identified.