Exploring caregiver-child interaction in child care center in Dhaka

Abstract

The number of working women is increasing with the enhancement of women education in Bangladesh. So, it has become a burning expedition for the working women of the country to secure and educate their children in a sound way. Thus, the need of quality child care center is in rise in the country in the current century. On the other hand, quality child care center refers the quality care through quality caregivers. By the way, quality child care refers a base of constructions which can effective in early childcare, like, responsiveness is responding to the needs of individual children and acknowledging children’s feelings and thoughts and providing opportunities for children to develop. Caregiver-child interaction plays a big role to ensure the quality of child care. Caregiver-child interaction is a fundamental key of early development. Positive caregiver-child interaction refers to sensitive responsiveness, language & cognitive stimulation support for peer interaction, positive warmth, positive affect, reciprocity, and mutuality. Caregiver-child interaction very much important for all the child’s basic physical and psychological needs must be met by one or more people who understand what infants, in general, need and what this child, in particular, wants. However, caregiver-child interaction need early years because of children latter development and for school readiness. Also a limited numbers of studies have been done in this topic, so need to more work on it. The research was an exploratory study which collected in depth information about the knowledge and practices by the caregivers in the child care center`s during caregiving hours. The research was to explore the knowledge and practice, consequently, it followed a qualitative data collection approach. By this method is able to give in-depth knowledge and practice about the caregiver-child interaction. Conversely, 6 caregivers have selected who is working in daycare center in Dhaka city. The researcher used qualitative method. The primary purpose to choose qualitative research approach is to gather in-depth understanding of caregiver-child interaction in child care center. The findings of the study show that, the knowledge of early childhood development varied among caregivers on some aspects but then also similar opinion was found on some aspects, of understandings. Again, the practices among the caregivers were found to be inconsistent with the knowledge shared in most of the aspects. For some factors are influenced on caregiver-child interaction that’s way caregivers lacked in implementing their knowledge while caregiving. A conclusion can be drawn that some factors which influenced caregiver-child interaction. Child-caregiver ratio, skill and training, and educational qualification it will help to address the influencing factors of caregiver-child interaction. Therefore, it can be recommended that adequate professional training on caregiver-child interaction should be provided to the caregivers. On the other hand, to ensure the quality practice of the caregiver’s performance through supervising and monitoring. A large-scale study is required to come up with the right picture of the knowledge and practice of the caregivers in the child care centers.