ABSTRACT

Notions of child-care and preschool quality reflect structural features of organizations or social processes that unfold between youngsters and caregivers or teachers. Less attention is paid to how elements of quality respond to the cognitive demands, language, and behavioral norms that young children learn in culturally bounded homes and communities. This chapter first reviews conventional definitions of early education quality. Next, we describe how these signs of quality have neglected culturally situated practices, especially how young children learn to become competent members of their social collectives. We highlight how early educators often miss the cultural strengths that Latino children, as one case, demonstrate in care or pre-k settings. These include cooperative skills, engaged approaches to learning, respect for adult authority, and discourse patterns. Finally, we identify promising practices through which early educators do scaffold from children’s cultural strengths, advancing early growth and enriching how the field conceives of quality.