The main objectives of the present dissertation were to investigate levels of classroom quality and child classroom engagement and disaffection, the relations of process quality in the classroom (i.e. teacher-child interaction) and structural quality (i.e.
teacher age, teacher teaching experience, child age, child gender, school type and class size) with child classroom engagement and disaffection. At the same time, the reliabilities and validities of the instruments CLASS and EvsD were examined. For those aims, three sub-studies were conducted. The discussion is structured following the research questions presented in the aims section of the introduction part of this dissertation. Moreover, the limitations, strengths, theoretical and practical implica-tions of the studies are elaborated. In addition, the suggesimplica-tions for further studies and conclusion are also presented.
4.1 ClassRoom Quality in Vietnamese kindeRgaRtens
4.1.1 levels of classroom quality in Vietnamese kindergartens.
With limited research on ECE in Vietnamese context, the levels of classroom quality in Vietnamese kindergartens were unknown. This raised a question, whether or not the classroom quality in the Vietnamese context differs from that of Western kinder-gartens. The findings of Sub-study I suggest that classroom quality in Vietnamese kin-dergartens was at moderate level. It is noticed that among the domains of classroom quality, classroom organization scored the highest, and instructional support scored the lowest. These results are slightly different from those from research in other coun-tries (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Hu et al., 2016; La Paro, Pianta, & Stuhman, 2004; Leyva et al., 2015; Pakarinen et al., 2010; Suchodoletz et al., 2014). In previous studies from other countries (the US, Finland, Germany, Chile, and China), emotional support got the highest scores, and instructional support got the lowest scores. On the dimension level, the instructional learning format and productivity scored higher than those of other countries. At the same time, negative climate scored higher in Vietnam than in other countries. Plausible reasons for this are that teachers in Vietnam must follow a standard national curriculum and a national teaching guide developed by MOET.
The MOET teaching guide has detailed teaching plans that tell teachers what to teach (i.e. which poem to read, which song to sing, which letter to teach on a certain day), and how to teach (i.e., how many steps are necessary to teach a song, which teaching tools to use). Thus, teachers in Vietnam tend to focus on organizing the classroom and the content they have to teach or what the children need to learn rather than on developing a good relationship with the students or caring for their feelings. Levels of regard for student perspectives and teacher sensitivity were on levels similar to those in Chilean kindergarten classrooms (Leyva et al., 2015), and lower than those of Western countries, i.e., Finland, German, the U.S. (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Pakarinen et al., 2010; Suchodoletz et al., 2014). A possible explanation for this is the larger class size of Vietnamese kindergartens compared to those of Western countries. In our data, 50% of the classrooms had 41–50 children, while in western countries, the class size
is much smaller. With a large class size, and the amount of knowledge and skills set by MOET to teach in one teaching session, Vietnamese teachers do not have time to pay attention to every child’s needs. It is noticed that the level of children expression was also low in Vietnamese kindergarten classrooms; children did not display high level of comfort with teachers, and they did not often seek teacher assistance or sup-port. In most of the classrooms, the teaching method was mostly chalk and talk,and children’s autonomy and leadership were rarely observed. Regarding the behavioral management dimension, children appeared to be aware of behavior expectations, and teachers were proactive in monitoring children; they quickly anticipated possible problems and redirected misbehaviors effectively. In general, Vietnamese children were obedient and cooperated with teachers. This would explain why the level of behavioral management was higher than that of other countries (i.e., Finland, Ger-man, Chile, the US). Teacher education in Vietnam also focuses on content/knowledge, skills, classroom organization and management; emotional support is not paid much attention, which is perhaps another explanation for the difference found.
4.1.2 Latent profiles of classroom quality.
As discussed above, the classroom quality in Vietnamese kindergartens was quite different from that of Western kindergartens. There are many reasons for this, such as, culture, educational policy and regulations, and class size. In addition to these rea-sons, one important aspect that would have great influence on classroom quality is the role of teacher. In Vietnam, teachers must follow the standard national curriculum and the national teaching guide strictly. The purpose of the teaching guide is to standard-ize or make uniform teaching style to ensure that every teacher in every class in the whole country teaches the same content in the same way. According to MOET, this is the way to control teaching quality, however, it also eliminates the personal aspect, which teachers could bring to the classroom. Thus, it was hypothesized that teachers still influence classroom quality through their own personal values, experience, and teaching style. This is despite the fact that many teachers share the same teaching style and similar levels of instruction, emotional support, and classroom organization. The person-oriented approach using in this dissertation allowed to identify the different sub-groups of teachers, each group shares similar patterns of classroom quality within the group but these differ from other profile groups.
The latent profile analysis shows that three latent profiles of classroom quality were found in Vietnamese kindergartens data. The findings indicate that this Vietnamese kindergarten data had smaller classroom quality profiles than those of Finnish data (four profiles) and American (five profiles). Notably, Vietnamese classroom quality profiles were clearly distinct from each other. Higher-quality classrooms are made up of the largest proportion, and fewer classrooms exhibited medium and low qualities.
Two plausible reasons might be: (1) Vietnamese children are usually obedient, less misbehave, and better cooperate with teachers than children in Western kindergartens (Vaage et al., 2009). This facilitates Vietnamese teachers with behavior management, boosting productivity, setting up instructional learning formats. This may also explain why teachers in Vietnam scored higher in classroom organization domain than teach-ers in Western kindergartens. (2) In this sample, the number of public kindergartens is smaller than the number of private kindergartens. The private kindergartens are funded by charging children’s parents for tuition fees, which means high quality and
good service are criteria for competing against low tuition public kindergartens and attracting more students. In private kindergartens, teachers’ salaries are also much higher than in public kindergartens, enabling private kindergartens to hire better teachers.
4.2 Child ClassRoom engagement and disaffeCtion in Vietnamese kindeRgaRtens
Child classroom engagement and disaffection were studied in terms of behavioral en-gagement (participation in learning activities, staying on task), emotional enen-gagement (interested in learning, doing their tasks happily), behavioral disaffection (passivity, inattention in learning), and emotional disaffection (disinterest, frustration, anxiety).
Levels of Vietnamese children’s engagement and disaffection in the classroom were found to be moderate. The reason could be that the students were quite young and did not have as strong a motivation for learning or learning for specific purposes as older students. They showed affective reaction and participation in some activities they liked, and they showed disinterest or boredom with activities that they did not like. In general, Vietnamese kindergarten students showed positive attitude towards learning, and their level of engagement was higher than disaffection in both behavior and emotion. Among the dimensions, the behavioral dimensions were higher than the emotional dimensions. This could be related to the cultural aspect; children in Viet-nam are expected to obey adults (teachers, parents, grandparents), and cooperate even if they do not want to do a task (Vaage et al., 2009). Therefore, Vietnamese students might participate in learning activities when teachers tell them to, even though they are not interested in the activities. Apparently, if the students like the learning activi-ties, the degree and/or level of their participation and involvement in the activities would be higher. The positive correlations between the behavioral and emotional di-mensions in both disaffection and engagement and the negative correlations between the dimensions of engagement and disaffection suggest that, when children showed interest in a learning activity, they participated in the activity and did the tasks hap-pily. This finding is agreement with the findings of Skinner et al (2008).
4.3 Relations Between stRuCtuRal Quality, pRoCess Quality, and Child ClassRoom engagement and disaffeCtion
4.3.1 Relations between classroom quality (in terms of teacher-child interacti-on quality) and child classroom engagement and disaffectiinteracti-on.
The findings of this dissertation highlight the significance of classroom structure and organization for child academic engagement. The ways teachers organized the classroom and structure the learning lesson would promote or degrade children’s engagement in the classroom. The finding is in agreement with several studies that have documented classroom organization, associated with greater engagement and academic achievement (Bohn, Roehrig & Prerssley, 2004; Suviste et al., 2016). The findings herein suggest that children more emotionally and behaviorally engaged
in better organized classrooms. However, unlike previous studies, this study reveals that child classroom engagement was negatively related to emotional support and not significantly related to instructional support. Emotional support reflects the emotional and social interactions between teachers and children and among children through verbal and non-verbal communications (Pianta et al., 2008). Notably, children in more emotionally supported classrooms were more confident, active, and had more proso-cial skills than children in less emotionally supported classes. Soproso-cial and informal conversations were more prevailing in more emotional support classes, nevertheless, students were distracted from learning activities when they engaged in those conver-sations and might fail to follow teacher’s instructions.
It is undeniable that teacher is the key actor and influence on children in class-room interaction, but teacher-child interaction is a reciprocal relationship, children are also important contributors, and have “evocative effect” on teacher’s behaviors and instructions. Several studies have documented how children characteristics, per-formances and behaviors affect teachers’ responses and interaction with children. In a longitudinal study using both variable-oriented and person-oriented approaches, Kiuru and colleagues (2015) found that children with poor academic performances, i.e. reading and math skills, would receive more teacher’s instructional support. Simi-larly, the study of Kikas, Silinskas, and Sooodla (2015) showed that children’s reading skills and interests have impacts on teacher’s perceptions and instructional support.
Teachers gave more individual literacy support to children who performed poorly in reading skills. In a recent study, Pakarinen and Kikas (2019) found that children’s math skills and teacher’s teaching practices had a reciprocal and mutual relation. The majority of educational research, however, has focused on the effects of teachers on children, and less research has studied this “evocative effect”. Therefore, more studies about the effects of children on teachers are needed.
4.3.2 Relations of teaching experience and teacher age to classroom quality profiles and child classroom engagement and disaffection.
In agreement with the findings of previous research (La Paro et al., 2009; Salminen et al., 2012), classroom quality profiles were not related to teacher age. The results showed significant relations between classroom quality profiles and teaching experi-ence, so that more experienced teachers were more likely to be represented in the high classroom quality profile. Negative relation between teacher age and teaching experi-ence was found; normally, older teacher had more experiexperi-ence, however there were other cases where teachers started their teaching careers much later, after working in other jobs. Younger teachers with more experience may handle a difficult situation in the classroom better than older teachers with less experience. The findings suggest that teacher age may be less significant to classroom quality than teaching experience.
It is noticed that low and medium quality profiles had small number of teachers;
this may be why only the relationship between teacher experience and high-quality profiles was found.
Moreover, teacher age and teaching experience had significant effects on child classroom engagement. Children were less engaged in the older teachers’ classrooms than in those of the younger teachers. The younger teachers may have more energy to involve in playing with their students or gave their students more physical activities and attention. Additionally, in more experienced teachers’ classrooms, children were
more engaged in learning. Teachers with more experience gave clear instructions, and the children knew what they were expected to do. More experienced teachers effectively maintained children’s interest, and intentions in academic activities.
4.3.3 Relations of child age, child gender, school type, and class size, to child classroom engagement and disaffection.
In line with findings from previous studies (Blatchford et al., 2011; Furrer & Skinner, 2003; Searle et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2011), the findings herein showed differences in classroom engagement and disaffection by child gender and age. Boys had higher classroom disaffection and lower engagement than girls did. Children in the younger group showed lower emotional disaffection and higher emotional engagement than children in the older group. In Vietnam, due to the high levels of academic competition (i.e., competition to gain admission to high-ranking primary schools), many parents want their children to know how to read, write, and do basic mathematics by the time they complete kindergarten. In Vietnamese kindergartens, children of age 5–6 are taught the alphabet, reading, writing, basic mathematics, and music (some kin-dergartens include English). Therefore, older group of children (age 5–6) must study more (e.g. practice reading, writing, and math) than younger group of children, in which means less playtime and more academic work.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, teachers in Vietnamese kindergartens have to follow and implement the standard curricula and program of MOET. Teachers who teach older groups of children (age 5–6) are under great pressures: 1) pressure from kindergarten leaders for academic performance, 2) pressure from children´s parents, who expect their children to be able to do basic mathematics, reading, writing when they complete kindergartens, 3) pressure from MOET inspectors and its local au-thorities, who expect teachers to implement, and follow the standard curriculum.
Consequence, teachers tend to more control and exert more disciplines on the older group. This may lead to greater classroom emotional disaffection and less emotional engagement among children in older group.
One of the recent strategies that policymakers and educators are interested in when reforming education is reducing classroom size. Several studies conducted in a Western context indicate that children are more engaged in smaller classes (An-derson, 2000; Blatchford, 2003; Finn et al., 2003). In contrast to those findings, it was found herein that children in the smaller classes were more disaffected than those in larger classes. Sub-study I found that Vietnamese teachers in this data sample were more controlling over children, had low regards for student perspectives and displayed less emotional support, than teachers in western countries. Prior stud-ies have suggested that children were more disaffected in learning when studying with controlling teachers (Skinner & Belmont, 1993; Skinner et al., 2008). Teachers in smaller classes might have more time for each child and also ensure that all the children gain more knowledge or study more, for example, in smaller classes, teach-ers would keep children busy by assigning more tasks if they completed tasks earlier than other children. In larger classes, teachers might not have the time or energy to pay attention to every child, therefore, the children would be able to play with and talk more to each other and study less than in smaller classes. For most children on the kindergarten level, playing is perhaps more attractive than learning academic subjects, such as math, writing and reading. In most of the classrooms that were
observed, the teaching methods for reading, writing, and mathematics were mostly the chalk and talk method, which requires children to be silent, listen to instructions and perform the tasks similar to students in primary or secondary schools. For chil-dren from 4 to 6 years old, it can be hard to be silent and focus on studying for 15–20 minutes, which is the length of time of one study session on the kindergarten level in most of the observed classrooms (Mahone & Schneider, 2012). Hence, children in smaller classes were more disaffected than those in larger classes.
In contrast to the findings of Coley et al. (2016) and Votruba-Drzal et al. (2013), it was found that child disaffection in public kindergartens/schools/child care centers was higher than those in private ones. In this research, more than half of the private kindergartens were Catholic kindergartens, which had better educational facilities and also higher tuition fees than the public kindergartens. Some private kindergartens even had gardens where the children could plant some vegetables under the super-vision of teachers. These kindergartens also had more extracurricular activities (e.g., music, art, sports, etc.) than public kindergartens. Although both private and public kindergartens used the MOET curriculum and programs, private institutions might have less bureaucracy, which leads to more innovation in teaching. Those might be reasons why the children in private kindergartens were less disaffected in learning than those in public kindergartens.
Finally, this study provided evidence that the CLASS and EvsD instruments can be used to measure classroom quality and child classroom engagement and disaffection in the Vietnamese context. Consistent with previous studies (Hu et al., 2016; Leyva et al., 2015; Pakarinen et al., 2010; Pianta et al., 2008), our findings support the existence of three domains of classroom quality in the Vietnam context. The present research reveals that the classroom quality domains in the Vietnam context were distinctive yet inter-correlated to each other. The magnitudes of model fit indices of the Vietnamese data were similar to those of Finnish data reported in the study of Pakarinen et al.
(2010), and better than those of the Chilean and Chinese data reported in Leyva et al. (2015) and Hu et al. (2016). The results contribute to the global generalizability of using CLASS.
The results of the confirmatory factor analysis gave evidences that the four-di-mensional structure of the EvsD instrument was more preferable in the Vietnamese context. The correlations between BE and EE and between BD and ED were higher than those between BE and BD and between EE and ED. The findings support the conceptualization of the motivational dynamic of engagement and disaffection of Skinner and her colleagues (2008) that “components of engagement mutually influ-ence each other” and “behavioral and emotional engagement in the classroom are tightly coupled” (Skinner et al., 2008, p. 767).
4.4 theoRetiCal and pRaCtiCal impliCations of the study
The dissertation, first of all, contributes to the international audience information about ECE in Vietnam educational context, which is different from the U.S and Euro-pean countries. Research in different educational and cultural contexts is necessary for global knowledge. The outcomes of the present dissertation not only inform inter-national readers the similarities and differences of classroom process and structural quality and children’s engagement in Vietnam context compared to other countries,
but also have important implications for researchers, educators, policymakers, and teachers in Vietnam. The dissertation presents the dynamics of classroom quality and child classroom engagement and disaffection and the relations of these to structural quality. Consequently, this dissertation contributes to the development of research
but also have important implications for researchers, educators, policymakers, and teachers in Vietnam. The dissertation presents the dynamics of classroom quality and child classroom engagement and disaffection and the relations of these to structural quality. Consequently, this dissertation contributes to the development of research