Abstract
The present study is a contribution to the topic of educational quality in preschools. This topic has been part of an extensive debate in Germany especially since the end of the 1990s (Tietze et al., 1998). For readers who are not familiar with preschool education in Germany, some characteristics should be briefly introduced. Generally, the ministries of social affairs of the 16 federal states carry the general administrative responsibilities for preschools rather than the educational authorities, who exclusively carry that responsibility for primary schools. In Germany, the discussion about educational quality within the field of early childhood education arose in the early 1990s as a consequence of problems that occurred from bringing together the early childhood education systems of Western Germany and the former Germany Democratic Republic after the reunification (Tietze et al., 1998; Tietze & Cryer, 1999). Changing family structures (e.g., growing rates of parental mobility, increasing risk of poverty) are also considered to have played a part in generating discussion about the importance of quality in preschool education (Esch, Klaudy, Micheel, & Stöbe-Blossey, 2006). Another important factor was the relatively poor performance of German pupils in international school benchmarking studies (e.g., Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA], German PISA-Consortium, 2001).
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Smidt, W. (2015). Educational Processes in Early Childhood Education: Activities of Target Children in Preschools. In: Schnotz, W., Kauertz, A., Ludwig, H., Müller, A., Pretsch, J. (eds) Multidisciplinary Research on Teaching and Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137467744_1
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