Research
Early Child Hood Care and Education (ECCE): Practices and Challenges, The case of Woldia town, North East Ethiopia
The study attempted to assess the current practices and major challenges of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in Woldia town private owned 8 KG schools. As a means, mixed research method was employed to analyze both the collected qualitative and quantitative data. Participants of this study were 123 KG children, 32 teachers,8 principals,19 caregivers and34 parents who are members of Teacher Parent Student Association (TPSA). In order to select the participants, purposive, comprehensive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were applied. The main data gathering instruments used in this study was observation, questionnaire and FGD. Moreover, document analysis was also used to collect supplementary data. Thematic data analysis techniques were also used to analyze the gathered qualitative data; whereas the quantitative data were analyzed by using statistical technique analysis of variance and post hoc comparison. The results obtained revealed that the studied private owned KG schools had no similar educational inputs. Most of the schools have no adequate physical learning environment such as buildings, classrooms, indoor outdoor materials and equipment, play grounds, and professional qualification of teachers and care givers based on the standard. Furthermore, the practices and major challenges of ECCE were also identified. Accordingly there was significance difference in effective utilization of some of the educational process. Only three KG schools were frequently employing child based teaching methods. Parents of these three schools children had better involvement in providing financial support, assessing their children interest and academic progress. Moreover, lack of trained KG care givers, assistant teachers and teachers, absence of professional development in the field of ECCE, inaccessibility physical learning environment of KGs, inaccessibility of indoor outdoor materials and equipment for children with disability, lack of budget on the ECCE
