The Culture of Child Care

Kay Sanders, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Child Development at Whittier College. Dr. Sanders' research examines cultural and racial socialization practices in community-based child care programs. In particular, she examines how racial/ethnic socialization in child care programs contributes to child care quality, relationships, and children's social and emotional school readiness skills. Alison Wishard Guerra, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Wishard Guerra's research examines culture and development in early childhood, with particular focus on Latino children from low-income families. She examines the intersection of language and social development through an investigation of narrative interactions, social pretend play, attachment relationships as they relate to the development of critical school readiness skills among children growing up in poverty and in diverse communities.

Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Editors
Contributors

Part I: Laying the Groundwork: Connecting Social-Cultural Context, Teacher-Child Attachment, and Peer Relations in Child Care

Chapter 1: Children and child care: A theory of relationships within cultural communities
Carollee Howes

Part II. Quality and Context in an Ethnically Diverse Society

Chapter 2: Understanding child care quality and implications for dual language learners
Sadie L. Hasbrouck and Robert Pianta

Chapter 3: "But Mommy doesn't do it like that": Considering cultural congruency between home and child care in the development of African American children
Kay E. Sanders

Chapter 4: Where the children are: Exploring quality, community, and support for family, friend and neighbor child care
Eva Shivers and Flora Farago

Part III. Relationships in Child Care: Beyond Risk and into Resilience

Chapter 5: The fourth 'R': Relationships, shifting from risk to resilience
Jennifer A. Vu

Chapter 6: Relationships and social trust in early childhood programs: The importance of context and mixed methods
Tom Weisner

Part IV. Peer Interaction as a Cultural Practice in Early Childhood

Chapter 7: Young children's peer relations with cross-ethnic peers: Implications, limitations, and future directions
Linda Lee

Chapter 8: Playing pretend and ready to learn: Peer play as a scaffold for development among low-income Latino children
Alison Wishard Guerra

Chapter 9: The first peers: Sibling play interactions across African American, Latino and Asian childhoods
Nora Obregon

Chapter 10: Preschool peer play interactions, a developmental context for learning for ALL children: Rethinking issues of equity and opportunity
Rebecca J. Bulotsky Shearer, Christine M. McWayne, Julia L. Mendez, and Patricia H. Manz

Part V: Methodological Implications for Applied Research on Child Care as a Context for Early Childhood Development

Chapter 11: Large-scale evaluations of child care as a context for development: Implications for research and practice
Margaret Burchinal

Chapter 12: Observation and interview methodology in ethnically diverse contexts: Methods and measurement of the contexts of early childhood development
Allison Sidle Fuligni

Part VI: Conclusion and Commentary

Chapter 13: Putting the horse before the cart: Why diversity must be at the forefront of early education policy, and not remain a tagline on the back of the policy wagon
Karen Hill Scott

Chapter 14: Concluding commentary: The long & winding road towards a culture of excellence in early care and education
Kay E. Sanders and Alison Wishard Guerra

Index