Structural quality in early childhood refers to the conditions a school sets up, such as group sizes, adult-to-child ratios, staff qualifications, space and materials, while process quality refers to what children actually experience day to day, above all their interactions with adults and with each other. Structures make good process possible but do not guarantee it, which is why leaders need to watch both: the conditions they control directly, and the everyday interactions that are harder to see and matter most to children.
This article explains the two ideas, outlines the main observation tools researchers have developed, describes what international bodies such as the OECD have said about monitoring quality, and suggests a realistic approach for a preschool or network that wants to know how good its provision really is without turning quality review into a scoring exercise.
Two kinds of quality, and why both matter
The distinction between structural and process quality has been part of early childhood research for decades. Structural features are relatively easy to count and regulate: how many children in a group, how many adults with them, what training the adults have, how much indoor and outdoor space there is, what materials are available. Most national regulations, including those for preschools in Vietnam, are written largely in structural terms.
Process quality is about the texture of daily life. Do adults talk with children, or mostly at them? Do they notice when a child is distressed and respond warmly? Do they extend children's thinking with questions and conversation? Do children have long enough stretches of absorbing play, or is the day broken into short, adult-led segments? Is the room calm, or tense? These features are harder to count, but research consistently finds that they are closely linked to children's development.
The two are related. A teacher with twenty-five toddlers and no assistant will struggle to have meaningful conversations with any of them, however skilled she is. But good structures do not produce good process on their own. Two rooms with identical ratios and equally qualified staff can feel completely different to the children in them. Leaders who look only at structures can therefore believe their provision is better than it is.
Common observation tools used in research
Researchers have developed several observation instruments for measuring quality in early childhood settings. They are designed for trained observers and are often used under licence; the summary below is for orientation rather than a guide to using them.
| Tool | Developed by | What it looks at |
|---|---|---|
| ECERS-R and ECERS-3 | Thelma Harms, Richard Clifford, Debby Cryer and colleagues in the United States | The overall environment for children aged roughly three to five, including space, routines, language, activities, interaction and programme structure |
| ITERS | The same group of authors | A parallel scale for infant and toddler rooms |
| ECERS-E | Kathy Sylva, Iram Siraj-Blatchford and Brenda Taggart in England | Curricular aspects of quality such as literacy, mathematics, science and diversity, designed as an extension to ECERS |
| SSTEW | Iram Siraj, Denise Kingston and Edward Melhuish | Interactions that support sustained shared thinking and emotional well-being |
| CLASS | Robert Pianta, Karen La Paro and Bridget Hamre | Teacher-child interactions in three domains: emotional support, classroom organisation and instructional support |
Each instrument reflects the assumptions of the context in which it was developed, and none was designed with a Vietnamese bilingual preschool in mind. They are best treated as sources of good questions rather than as ready-made yardsticks.
What international reviews say about monitoring quality
The OECD's Starting Strong series has followed early childhood policy across member and partner countries since 2001. Its 2015 volume, Starting Strong IV, focused on monitoring quality and described how countries monitor service quality, staff quality and child development and outcomes, noting both the benefits of monitoring and its risks. Among the cautions it raised were the danger of narrowing practice to what is measured and the importance of involving staff in monitoring so that it supports improvement rather than only compliance.
UNESCO and other international organisations have similarly emphasised that quality in early childhood is multidimensional and context-dependent, and that systems should look at relationships and learning experiences as well as at inputs. The broad message for school leaders is consistent: measure what matters to children, involve teachers in the process, and use what is learned to improve practice rather than to rank people.
For a preschool, this argues against a single quality score and in favour of a small set of regular, varied looks at practice, combined with honest conversation about what they show.
Structural indicators every leader should track
Group sizes and ratios in practice, not on paper. The ratio on the timetable can differ from the ratio at four in the afternoon when staff go on breaks or leave early. Spot checks across the day reveal the real picture.
Staff stability. How often children's main adults change matters greatly, especially for babies and toddlers. Tracking turnover and the number of different adults each group meets in a week is a useful early warning.
Qualifications and ongoing training. Whether every teacher meets the national requirements, and whether each has had meaningful professional development in the past year.
Planning and reflection time. Whether teachers actually receive the non-contact time they are supposed to have, or whether it is regularly lost to cover and administration.
Space and materials. Whether rooms and outdoor areas are used as intended, whether open-ended materials are available and maintained, and whether children can reach what they need.
Watching process quality without turning it into inspection
Process quality can only be seen by spending time in rooms. The difficulty is doing so in a way that helps rather than frightens teachers. Visits that feel like inspection produce performances: teachers become stiff, children pick up the tension, and the leader sees something other than normal practice.
A more useful pattern is frequent, short, low-stakes visits with a clear and agreed focus. For example, over a month a coordinator might spend ten or fifteen minutes in each room looking only at how adults respond to children's questions, or only at how transitions are handled. Notes are brief and shared with the teacher soon afterwards in a conversation that starts with what the teacher noticed. Over time, visits become ordinary and teachers start to invite them.
Leaders can borrow questions from the research tools without using the scales themselves. How often do adults engage in back-and-forth conversation with children? Do adults follow children's lead in play? Are children's feelings acknowledged? Do children have choices about what to do? Are there extended periods of play? A small number of such questions, used consistently, gives a much richer picture than a long checklist completed once a year.
Using documentation and children's experience as evidence
Classroom visits are not the only source of evidence. Documentation produced by teachers, such as learning stories, project records and photographs with commentary, shows how children are thinking and how adults are supporting them. Reviewing a sample of documentation each month reveals patterns that short visits can miss: whether projects are following children's interests, whether both languages are present in meaningful ways, whether some children are rarely mentioned at all.
Children's own experience is another source. Young children cannot fill in surveys, but they show what matters to them in where they choose to play, how they greet adults in the morning, what they talk about at home and how settled they seem. Teachers and families can be asked simple questions about this. A child who is reluctant to come to school for weeks is giving information about quality as clear as any observation scale.
Families, too, offer evidence, though it needs interpreting carefully. Parents often judge quality by visible outputs such as worksheets or performances, which a play-based curriculum deliberately avoids. Their observations about their child's happiness, confidence and language at home are nonetheless valuable.
Quality in a bilingual setting: what to look for in language
Most general quality tools were developed in monolingual settings, so bilingual preschools need to add their own questions about language. The aim is to see whether both languages are being used as the curriculum intends: as tools for thinking and relationships, not only as content to be taught.
Useful questions include: Do children hear extended, natural talk in both languages, or mostly short instructions and single words? Are English-speaking adults part of routines such as meals, arrival and outdoor play, or only of planned sessions? Do adults respond to children who mix languages by recasting and extending, or by correcting and stopping them? Are children who are not yet speaking one of the languages included warmly and given time, or pressed to perform? Is Vietnamese treated as a language of real learning, with rich stories and conversation, or only as the language of discipline and care?
Answers to these questions come from listening during visits, from documentation that records children's words in both languages, and from teachers' own reflections. They give leaders a far better picture of bilingual quality than counting English hours on a timetable, which says little about what children actually hear and use. Families' observations about how their child uses each language at home add a further, often revealing, perspective.
A realistic quality cycle for a preschool or network
Rather than an annual audit, a simple cycle repeated through the year keeps quality visible and tied to improvement.
- Agree a small set of quality questions with teachers, drawing on the curriculum's principles and on questions borrowed from research tools.
- Track structural indicators monthly, especially real ratios, staff changes and planning time.
- Make short, focused classroom visits each month, rotating the focus, and discuss each visit with the teacher.
- Review a sample of documentation as a team, looking for patterns rather than judging individuals.
- Gather families' and children's experience through ordinary conversations and simple questions each term.
- Choose one or two improvement priorities each term, link them to professional development, and look again at the same questions later.
This cycle also prepares a school well for the self-assessment required in national quality accreditation, because the evidence is gathered as part of normal work rather than assembled under pressure.
In a network, the same questions can be used in every campus, which allows coordinators to compare notes and learn from one another without turning the comparison into a ranking.
Why quality monitoring must not rank teachers or children
It is tempting, once a school starts gathering evidence about quality, to turn it into league tables: which teacher scored highest, which campus is best, which class is behind. In early childhood this usually does more harm than good. Teachers who feel ranked become defensive and hide difficulties, which is the opposite of what improvement requires. Comparisons between campuses encourage presentation rather than honest reflection.
The same applies even more strongly to children. A curriculum that observes children to understand and support them, and that explicitly avoids scores and rankings, cannot then aggregate children's development records into tables comparing classes or teachers. Doing so would quietly reintroduce exactly the pressure the curriculum is designed to remove.
Quality monitoring works best when its purpose is clear and shared: to see the school as children experience it and to make that experience better. Leaders who keep that purpose in front of everyone, and who visibly use evidence to support rather than blame, find that teachers become their most reliable source of information about quality.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
What is the difference between structural and process quality in early childhood?
Structural quality covers conditions such as ratios, group sizes, staff qualifications, space and materials. Process quality covers what children actually experience, especially interactions with adults and peers. Structures make good process possible but do not guarantee it.
Which matters more for children, structural or process quality?
Research consistently links process quality, particularly the quality of adult-child interactions, closely with children's development. Structural quality matters because it makes good interactions possible, so leaders need to monitor both rather than choose between them.
What tools do researchers use to measure preschool quality?
Common instruments include the ECERS family of scales, ITERS for infant and toddler rooms, ECERS-E for curricular quality, SSTEW for sustained shared thinking and emotional well-being, and CLASS for teacher-child interactions. They are designed for trained observers.
Should a preschool use research observation scales for internal quality review?
They can be useful sources of questions, but they were developed for specific contexts and usually require training to use reliably. Many schools do better borrowing a few key questions and applying them through regular, short classroom visits.
How can leaders observe classrooms without making teachers anxious?
By making visits frequent, short and focused on an agreed question, sharing notes quickly, starting conversations with what the teacher noticed, and using what is learned to support rather than judge. Over time visits become ordinary.
Why should quality monitoring avoid ranking teachers or children?
Ranking makes teachers defensive and discourages honest reflection, and turning children's development records into comparisons reintroduces pressure that a play-based curriculum aims to remove. Monitoring should help improve children's experience, not sort people.