| Policy designed to improve the quality of early childhood education (ECE) programs by raising teacher education requirements is seen as problematic by some experts in the field. While a generally positive trend has been shown to exist between teacher education and measures of classroom quality and child development, attempts to determine the specific educational attainment required to produce desired outcomes have been inconclusive. This meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the research findings in order to quantify the relationship between teacher educational attainment and quality outcome measures in ECE center-based classroom settings.; The primary focus of this study was whether completion of a bachelor's degree has a positive impact on ECE outcomes. The analysis indicated that effects on quality outcomes from teachers with a bachelor's degree (the treatment group) were significantly different from those teachers with less education (the comparison group). In standard deviation units, the average effect was .16 standard deviations (p < .05) higher for teachers with a bachelor's degree than for their non-bachelor's degree counterparts.; There are, however, three caveats. First, the effect size is relatively small, though significant. Therefore, the benefit of requiring that ECE teachers have a bachelor's degree must be seen in light of the potential benefits of using the requisite funds some other way. Second, the research underlying this effect size is correlational in nature. Thus, it is possible that any number of factors, aside from having a bachelor's degree, cause this effect. Finally, it should be noted that the correlations between quality indices and outcome measures can only distinguish patterns among the available literature. Since the quality of studies in this area is generally poor, the findings must be treated with caution. |
