1.1 Introduction
Early caregiver-child interaction plays a profound role in the development of self-regulation, cognitive development, language acquisition, and socio-emotional adjustment. Attitude refers to relatively enduring organizations of feelings, beliefs and behaviour tendencies toward other persons, groups, ideas or objects. Attitudes play an important role in virtually every aspect of social life. They exert a powerful influence upon the nature of our relationship with others. For example, positive attitudes towards particular persons lead us to seek them out, to do things for them, and to imitate their actions while negative attitudes lead us to avoid, reject and possibly even harm them. In a sense, many of our reactions to other may be viewed as largely attitudinal in nature. Secondly, attitudes influence most important decisions.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
The quality of life for a child and the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to the first few years of life. From birth until about five years old, a child undergoes tremendous growth and change. If this period of life includes support for growth in cognition, language, motor skills, adaptive skills and social-emotional functioning, the child is more likely to succeed in school and later contribute to society. A good early childhood care and education provides the intervention programmes that support children’s survival growth, development and learning including health, nutrition and hygiene, and cognitive, social, physical and emotional development from birth to entry into primary school in formal, informal and non-formal settings (UNESCO, 2007).
The early childhood care provides comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, inclusive educational opportunities to the children. According to UNESCO (2000), the past decade has provided more evidence that good quality early childhood care and education, both in families and in more structured programmes have a positive impact on the survival, growth, development and learning potential of children.
In contrast, other animals had the early experience of growing up in standard cages or in barren, isolated conditions. The results were stunning. The brains of the animals growing up in the enriched environment developed better than the brains of the animals reared in standard or isolated conditions. The brains of the “enriched” animals weighed more, had thicker layers, had more neuronal connections, and had higher levels of neuro-chemical activity. Similar findings occurred when older animals were reared in vastly different environments, although the results were not as strong as for the younger animals. Such results give hope that enriching the lives of infants and young children who live in improvised environments can produce positive changes in their development.
Depressed brain activity has recently been found in children who grow up in a deprived environment (Cicchetti, 2001). A child who grew up in the unresponsive and non stimulating environment of a Romanian orphanage showed considerably depressed brain activity compared with a normal child. Each time a baby tries to ouch an attractive object or gazes intently at a face, tiny bursts of electricity shoot through the brain, knitting neurons together into circuit what results are some the behavioural milestones. For example, at about 2 months of age, the motor-control centres of the brain develop to the point at which infant can suddenly reaches out and grabs a nearby object. At about 4 months, the neural connect necessary for depth perception begin to form.
To a child, the world is an awesome place where experiences are just waiting to surprise and excite the young growing mind. Children are naturally curious, they want to explore and learn from everything they can see, touch and do. If their explorations bring pleasure or success, they will want to learn more and discover the things around them. Piaget had asserted that the ability of a child to know the properties of an object is determined by the child’s interaction with the object. It is during these early years that children form attitudes about learning that will last a lifetime (Cartton, 2003).
Therefore, in Okpe District where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Attitudes of Caregivers Towards the Improvement of Children’s Academic Abilities in Daycare School.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation revealed that mothers are exclusively caretakers of their own babies and young children. These activities are quite important but must be handled with flexibility. The Nigerian mother is too eager to take care of her child and she is always all over the child. However, today there is this craze for wealth. There are career women predominantly in the urban areas.
These children are therefore entrusted into the hands of unlearned housemaids, illiterate nannies, grandmothers or grand aunties who may be lackadaisical about their health and nutrition. This method of care giving was a common phenomenon in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. From the 80s, uncountable number of day centres, crèches and play groups sprang up.
With Nigeria in her 50s, the career woman now gives a sigh of relief, thrusting her child into the sophisticated care of caregivers in the nearest care-giving centres. Because of long hours of working, the child is neglected in the area of ECCE by the mother. The child must have gone to bed by 8pm, most probably without dinner and if there is, not a balanced diet. The formative years of the growing children may be thus maladjusted.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to ascertain the Attitudes of Caregivers Towards the Improvement of Children’s Academic Abilities in Daycare School. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To find out the various problems in which the care givers usually encounter towards child care practices;
- To assess the impact of care givers towards child care practices;
- To ascertain the caregivers attitude towards child care practices in Day Care schools;
- To find the extent to which child care practices is relevant to the early childhood education; and
- To find out the difference between the children who were presented for child care practices and those who do not as regards to their early childhood education.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- What are the various problems in which the care givers usually encountered towards child care practices?
- To what extent do care givers impact on childcare practices?
- What is the attitude of care givers towards child care practices?
- To what extent is child care practice relevant to the early childhood education?
- What is the difference between the children who were presented for childcare practices and those who do not as regards childcare practices?
1.6 Research Hypothesis
In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.
Hypothesis One
- H0: There is no significant relationship between the caregivers and their impact on childcare practices.
- H1: There is a significant relationship between the caregivers and their impact on childcare practices.
Hypothesis Two
- H0: There is no significant relationship between the attitude of caregivers and childcare practices.
- H1: There is a significant relationship between the attitude of caregivers and childcare practices.
Hypothesis Three
- H0: There is no significant problem encountered by care givers towards child care practices.
- H1: There is a significant problem encountered by care givers towards child care practices.
Hypothesis Four
- H0: There is no significant relationship between the relevance of child care practice and early childhood education.
- H1: There is a significant relationship between the relevance of child care practice and early childhood education.
Hypothesis Five
- H0: There is no significant difference between children who attended childcare practices and those who did not as regards childcare practices.
- H1: There is a significant difference between children who attended childcare practices and those who did not as regards childcare practices.
1.7 Significance of Study
The study will focus on both high and low density area of Okpe District Day Care schools will be visited. For the high density area will be selected as an example whereas for the low density area will be studied.
The study will be limited to caregiver’s attitude towards childcare practices. This is because it would be too wide if other areas are being introduced and will be difficult to be covered for eh short period of the study.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.8 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Attitudes of Caregivers towards the Improvement of Children’s Academic Abilities in Daycare School using Okpe District, Delta State as a case study.
1.9 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this establishment to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
1.10 Definition of Terms
Health: Health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism. In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental, psychological and social changes with environment.
