Expert practitioner's views about the Chinese early childhood environment rating scale

Abstract

This study aims to examine the views of 176 expert practitioners on the relevance and feasibility of applying the Chinese Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (CECERS), which is developed based on the Chinese version of Harms, Clifford, and Cryer's (2005 Harms, T., R. M. Clifford, and D. Cryer. 2005. Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised. New York: Teachers College Press. [Google Scholar]) world renowned Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-revised (ECERS-R). The CECERS measures the quality of Chinese kindergartens, in which teachers have traditionally utilised whole-group teaching as the main approach to curriculum planning and delivery as well as organisation of learning environment. What constitutes quality kindergarten practice in the Chinese contexts and tension between ‘objective’ quality and culturally-appropriate quality will be discussed. Using a five-point Likert Scale, reviewers rated and provided comments for: (1) the quality of the instrument overall; (2) the appropriateness of the major changes made in CECERS in comparison to the ECERS-R; and (3) feedback for each quality dimension. Results, organised by the predetermined survey questions, show that, overall, reviewers highly support CECERS as a much needed, valuable, quality measure. They also support all the suggested changes to make the instrument culturally relevant and contextually meaningful. Meanwhile, they offer helpful suggestions for future revisions and pose some issues and concerns about the applicability of the instrument to measure quality practice in rural areas of China which are worth debating.