• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.209-225
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to research the actual condition of environment and management of outdoor play at child care centers in Seoul, and to present a planning guideline for outdoor play environment. For this purpose, data were collected by a structured questionnaire and subjects were 164 directors of child care centers located in Seoul. The contents of the questionnaire were composed of general facts about the respondent and facility, environmental condition, managerial condition, and director's understanding about outdoor play. The data were then analyzed using the frequency, percentage, mean and crosstab. The major results have shown the following: 1) Most child care centers in Seoul had some space for outdoor play. 62% of them used front yard and 11 % a rooftop. 2) The space usually included fixed play instruments such as slide and complex unit structures, sand play area, and open area. It also had many natural elements as shrubs and earth. 3) 78% of the centers had a schedule for outdoor play. The schedule operates flexibly according to each center's own day schedule. Generally, a time for outdoor play was 21 to 30 minutes. 4) The directors of child care centers thought highly of outdoor play for it contributes to the balanced development of children. They answered that equipments and spaces, program devices, and teacher's understanding are some of the important factors for active outdoor play. 5) Most of them wanted wood-working area (construction activity area), water play area, and cages.

• The Journal of Sustainable Design and Educational Environment Research
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2010

It is indispensable for child care centers to investigate and manage indoor air quality (IAQ) because they perform education and day care for children who usually have weak immunity. Nevertheless, there is insufficient research being done, given its importance. This study aims to investigate indoor pollutants' concentration and to seek the causes in order to improve the air quality conditions. Also it aims to secure data which can be used for further researches. Measurements were performed for air temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particle mass, formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds. Temperature, humidity, CO and CO2 were measured 30times(1min/time) and PM10 was measured 10times (3min/time). Formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds were measured and analyzed based on The Indoor Air Quality Official Test Method. The results show that the temperatures were within the comfort zone in over half of the centers. CO2 was found to be the main pollutants as its concentration exceeded the IAQ standard. The concentrations of TVOC and PM10 exceeded the standard, by 32% and 24% respectively, whereas those of HCHO and CO were under the standard. HCHO and CO concentrations were under the guideline. 24% of child care centers for education were found to exceed the standard in 2 or more of the pollutants. 82% of were found to exceed the standard by 1 or more. Therefor it is requested for IAQ to manage and improve in child care center for education.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.253-272
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• 2020

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the counseling contents of daycare center teachers by using text mining and semantic network analysis methods to find the necessary support directions for daycare teachers and to improve the quality of child-care. Methods: Five hundred thirteen cases of counseling recorded on the open bulletin board of online counseling (Naver Bands for Nursery Teacher Counseling) were collected, and frequency analysis, centrality solidarity analysis, and machine learning-based topic analysis were conducted using the NetMiner4.3 program. Results: First, 'teacher-to-child ratio' was highest in the frequency. Second, 'colleagues' were all high in all centrality analysis. Third, machine learning-based topical analysis shows that the topics were categorized as subjects about 'childcare and education', 'working environment that supports professional development' and 'working condition', and among them, 'first-time teacher concerns' accounted for 44% of the total counseling content. Conclusion/Implications: This study implied that it is necessary to provide high-quality child-care and education to infants by lowering the 'teacher-to-child ratio', and a systematic program is needed to help improve effective communication skills in interpersonal relationships such as between parents, fellow teachers, and principals. In addition, self-development and efforts to improve teachers expertise should be prioritized in order to improve infant care quality and quality of teachers.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.37-54
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• 1994

The home environments, daily activities, caregiving behaviors of mothers and teachers, infant's verbal behaviors, attachment to mothers and teachers of day care infants were compared to those of home-reared infants. 30 two-year-old home-reared infants and their mothers were observed at home by the time sampling method and 31 two-year-old day care infants and their mothers and teachers were observed at home or at the center. The HOME scale, the behavioral checking lists for caregiving behaviors and for the infants' verbal behaviors, and the Attachment Q-set were used for the home and center observations. It was found that the characteristics of early environments of day care infants were different from those of home-reared infants, but that infants' attachment to the mothers were not different. However, day care infants' attachment security scores to their mothers were higher than to their teachers.

• Korean Journal of Child Education & Care
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.159-174
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• 2019

Objective: The study wanted to find out what changes the mother, who is the main parent of the severely disabled children, experienced in their lives through the use of day hospitals and child care services, and what difficulties they had, and discussed policy practical improvements that could satisfy both the medical and developmental needs of the severely disabled. Methods: The participants of the study were 9 mothers of a child with severe disabilities who had experience using hospitals and kindergarten. They were recruited by snowball sampling method. Focus group interview and individual interview were conducted. Results: As a result of the analysis, the mother of severely handicapped child gradually began to seek the balance of life as her child grew and became aware of the institution other than the day hospital. - (e.g) Although I was distracted and worried for the first time, I was gradually adjusting to the time away from my child thinking positively. Children with severe disabilities were also positively influenced by various experiences. They become to show som positive behavior or feeling such as brightening facial expressions or smile as they were using daycare centers or kindergartens in addition to daytime hospitals. Conclusion/Implications: Through the results of this study, comprehensive policy proposals on child care, welfare, and medical care were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.73-85
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• 2010

The purpose of this qualitative research is to explore the intergenerational ambivalence of mothers with preschoolers. Twenty full-time mothers and 19 working mothers were interviewed in depth. Most of the participants who received instrumental support from their mothers showed ambivalence, and especially the working mothers were more likely to feel ambivalence than the full-time mothers. However, participants who received little or no support from their mothers did not report any ambivalent feelings. Their ambivalent feelings came from both their social structure and intrapersonal contradictions. In order to avoid ambivalent feelings, some participants redefined receiving support from their mothers as a positive thing. Meanwhile, the participants who received active support tried to divert their ambivalence by providing child care support for their children, and they showed a 'repayment provision' tendency. Some working mothers and most of the full-time mothers said they would allot 'limited provision' by excluding child care support for their children. Those who were aware of this ambivalence issue sought 'reasonable provision' for their children. Depending on these results, several suggestions are presented to solve the ambivalence.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.897-915
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the actual conditions and characteristics of weekly and daily child care programs for infants, to provide a basis for the improvement of infant care quality. Weekly and daily curricula of 18 classes for one and two-year-olds classes (9 for each ages) from childcare centers in D city were collected from Nov. 2009 to February 2010. The results are as following: first, classes for one-year-olds plan 6-25 activities and classes for two-year-olds plan 12-30 activities weekly, with differences in the number of weekly activities according to the childcare centers. The number of weekly activities should be planned considering infants' interest as well as educational continuity of the activities. Second, the investigation of daily activities showed that the routine activities planned for one-year-olds were for total of 310-600 minutes and for two-year-olds 310-540 minutes. Among these, on average of 66% of the time was planned for everyday life such as eating and napping. The rest of time was dedicated to indoor and outdoor free play. However a few centers allocated more time for group activities according to subjects compared to free play. A curriculum composed of group activities ignoring infants' individual developmental differences should not be encouraged. Last, the results of cluster analyses on weekly and daily curricula in terms of the number of activities and time, duration, number of group activities and time showed that curricula for infants could be characterized into two types: "free play" and "group activity" curricula.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.59-73
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• 2022

This qualitative study focused on the activation of cooperative child care sharing centers'. Eight centers nationwide were selected as example cases in accordance with region (large city, small and medium-sized city, county unit), opening time, operating institution, location, full-time care for dual-income children, and participation in the 2020 care community pilot project. Co-researchers visited each center together to observe the site and conducted in-depth interviews with the head of the center or dedicated staff using semi-structured questionnaires. Interview data were analyzed using triangle verification and transcribed : the data were then grouped into 12 categories and 34 subcategories. From this, the following three topics were derived: the main functions, operational difficulties, and activation conditions. In conclusion, four suggestions are made: 1. proper relationship with the Family center, the cooperative childcare sharing center, and the local care communities 2. activation plan through "solution of operational difficulties" 3. "extension" of the cooperative child care sharing center 4. the role of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Korea Institute for Healthy Family, local governments, and Family Centers.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.97-108
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• 1999

The purpose of this atudy was to identify the influence of demographic characteristics of full-time working mother's family on maternal parenting efficacy as well as child-rearing practices and to examime the relationship between mothers with perceived parenting efficacy and child-rearing practices. The subjects for this study were 100 working mothers of two to six year old children attending employer sponsored child care centers. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlation analysis, and step-wise regression were used for data analysis. The major findings of this study were as follows: 1) Full-time working mothers' child-rearing practices were influenced by the ages of mothers and fathers, parental education level and occupation, family income, age of the child, and number of children in the family. 2) The more working mothers perceived parenting efficacy, the more mothers utilized effective child-rearing practices. 3) Age of the child, maternal education level, mothers with levels of perceived parenting efficacy were significant predictors for full-time working mothers' child-rearing practices.

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.59-69
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• 2020

Recognizing the importance of early childhood education, the government is preparing measures at the national level, including expanding the scope of free education for infants, linking early childhood education to elementary schools, unifying the system in charge of early childhood education, printing the cost of operating a full-time system for double-income couples, and policies for low-income infants. In Korea's childcare policy, the need for childcare has increased due to the increase of free double-income couples, the increase of nuclear families, and the increase of divorce rates. Despite the overall increase in the child care budget, Korea's child care policy shows many problems in its efficiency due to the burden of childcare facilities and childcare fees for caregivers. After looking into the theoretical contents of the free childcare policy and the corresponding child care support policy, we would like to consider ways to improve the free childcare policy.