Are Campus Child Development Laboratories Obsolete?

Thus, one primary issue raised by the study is whether effective training can occur in the absence of actual children. The implementation of new technologies on university campuses, such as cd rom and video-based instruction, could feasibly create scenarios in which developmental material is covered without connection to "actual" children. Yet the data from this study suggest such methods must not supplant hands-on experience. In the present case, watching was not the same as interacting with the children. Indeed, il anything, the data support an increase in the amount of hands-on time included in the preparation of child development professionals.

One rationale for increasing child interaction time is that perhaps more hands-on time (more than ten hours) is needed to develop students' sense of competence, in the present study, neither group of students changed in terms of their perception of themselves as caregivers. In part, this may be because even the hands-on group spent only two hours a day for rive weeks in the laboratory.

An interesting finding was the trend for students to rate infants as more willful and more capable alter interacting with them in the laboratory. One interpretation is that these trends reflect that students developed a more accurate picture of infancy and toddlerhood as the semester progressed. Indeed, students described in other studies report a changed perception of young children after interaction with them (Kourany, Humphreys & Rabin 1987). A second idea is that perhaps the reverse is true for students who have no interaction time-- e.g., these students develop a false impression of what infant/toddlers are like. Students in the present study tended to rate the infant/toddlers as easier alter observing only. Would these results change il the students had hands-on experience?

Keeping Child Laboratory Programs Alive

A second issue raised by the study is whether child development laboratories are still economically viable in the wake of private, for-profit child care available elsewhere in the community. To do so, such laboratories must be viewed as unique and significant in terms of what they provide. For example, one element that could be publicized is that many campus, as opposed to community, programs offer trained and well-qualified staff, and child-per-staff ratios well below mandated levels. In addition, campus child development programs also offer students a unique chance to work with families as professionals (Honig, 1996; Muldoon, 1984), and can model research for students and engage them in it (Briley, Reifel, & Paver, 1997; Herr, Zimmerman & Saienga, 1988; Horm-Wingerd & Cohen, 1991; Townley & Routt, 1988). Neither of these benefits are likely to be replaced by computer simulations or for-profit care in the near future.

The data also highlight the unique contributions of infant/toddler laboratories, as opposed to programs for older children. Although programs for these youngest children are among the most costly to operate (due to caregiver-child ratios required by licensing), such programs should continue to be supported. In part, this is because they introduce infants and infant care to students who are more likely to have had experience working with older children (e.g., summer camp, babysitting), but not with infants per se. In addition, such programs are important because the assessment of infant/toddlers is in some ways more subtle than that of older children. For example, in the Koutany, Humphreys & Rabin (1987) study, the average number of observed behaviors was higher for medical students who assessed older (e.g., four and five-year-olds), rather than younger, children. This may not have been because the younger children engaged in fewer behaviors, but rather because capturing and observing such behaviors requires more sophisticated observational knowledge.