How much is environment supportive for early childhood development in Serbia?

Abstract

The capacity of parents to create learning opportunities and stimulate the development of a child is now considered as one of the key factors of care quality. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which parents of children in Serbia support and stimulate their development through everyday activities. The total sample consisted of 1388 parents of children aged 2 to 60 months. Parents' encouragement scale was designed for 8 ages (from 2 to 60 months) based on the Early Learning and Developmental Standards (Baucal et al., 2012), precisely based on the content of the items. Questions have been formulated about how many parents, or other adults taking care of the child, engage with the child in interaction in their daily activities, or in certain activities that are assumed to be developmentaly stimulating. The reliability of these scales, expressed by Kronbach's alpha coefficient was from 0.77, which is considered to be an acceptable value, up to 0.97 which is considered to be an excellent indicator of the reliability of the instrument. The minimum score on the Parents' encouragement scale was 0.96, and the maximum 5. The mean (M) was relatively high and was 4.10 (SD = 0.55) for the total sample. The mean was the lowest when it comes to the age of 14 months (M = 3.76, SD = 0.40), 18 months (M = 3.76, SD = 0.46), 48 months (M = 3.76, SD = 0.50) and 60 months M = 3.76, SD = 0.42). Individual items with lower means were: "How often have you checked the picture books with the baby in the last 15 days"; "How often have you, in the past 15 days, shown the baby what kind of sounds are common household items (spoons, mugs, etc.) and allowed the baby to study, cuddle or shake" (at the age of 6 months) and "How often are you in for the last 15 days, has encouraged the child to use crayons and wrap around paper" (at the age of 10 to 14 months) and playing roles at the age of 12 to 18 months. The highest means were obtained at 4 months (M = 4.65, SD = 0.34) and 2 months of age (M = 4.44, SD = 0.42). The distribution being curved towards higher scores is probably due to the characteristics of the sample itself, since it was relatively high number of parents with a high education, which is probably reflected in the way they support the early development of children. However, there was no correlation with parents' education and socioeconomic status. About 14% of the children surveyed were below one standard deviation compared to the mean, while under 2 standard deviations were only 2.5% of the respondents. The obtained data indicate a relatively small number of children living in nonstimulative environment, although one should not ignore the fact that every fourteenth child is in the enviroment in which adults could support their development in a better way.