Screen-time Usage in Licensed Child Care Programs

Event Center BC

The purpose of the present study is to investigate how much time children spend using screens in home-based and center based programs. A secondary goal is to determine if children are accessing screen time in non-parental caregiving situations, what they are watching or doing, and what teachers are doing while children are on such devices. All participants were English speaking teachers employed by licensed center based and home based child care programs in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. All participants completed four surveys including a demographic survey, two teacher beliefs scales (one regarding beliefs about DAP (Charlesworth, Hart, Burts, & Hernandez, 1991), the second regarding beliefs about child rearing (Shafer and Edgerton, 1985), and a media survey (Wilcox-Herzog and Sharp, 2016). The four surveys were made available through Qualtrics survey software. It is predicted that children in center-based programs will be exposed to less screen time than children in home based programs. It is also predicted that if screen time is being used, teacher’s beliefs about developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) will reflect how technology is being integrated into the curriculum. Specifically, it is believed that teachers who hold DAP beliefs will be more likely to use technology in developmentally appropriate ways and that they will interact more with children while they are using these devices.