Guidelines for Facility Management for Exponential Development Health and Safety of Early Childhood Development Centers Under the Local Administrative Organizations of Nan Province

Abstract

Abstract

          Early childhood development center is vital to the development and growth of young children and it is a facility that provides care for preschool children. However, the development of children and families in the 21st century with the value to promote accelerating learning is misled among parents who believe that those with a lot of knowledge are regarded competent people. Over emphasis on academic teaching at the early childhood stage can pose an increase of stress and pressure on children and moreover hindered their brain development by appropriate ages. Focusing only on academics give children less opportunities to play and learn various skills that should be practiced during early childhood, including such as muscle training, cultivating manners and consciousness or even the practice of socializing with friends of the same age which will allow children to attain quality and standard development appropriate to their ages. In addition, these will increase their opportunities to be well prepared and achieve comprehensive development in all 5 areas including physical, emotional, mental, social, and intellectual appropriately. Practically, early childhood development center helps ease the burden of patents with no time to raise their children during the daytime. The Center with the lack of quality in operation was found to have problems in terms of knowledge, understanding, and ability to develop its quality, academic management, and active work in child preparation. The researcher is therefore interested to seek guidelines for facility management of early childhood development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province so that they are developed to keep up with changes. The objectives of this research were to investigate the level of facility management and propose guidelines to manage facilities for exponential growth in health and safety of early childhood development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province. The population in this research included a sample group of totally 265 persons comprising 31 administrators and 69 heads of early childhood development centers, and 165 child care teachers working in 221 early childhood development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province. The sample size was determined following Krejcie & Morgan (1970, p 608) and using a simple random sampling method to recruit a sample group of 265 persons. Research instruments consisted of questionnaire and strategy evaluation form. The analysis of quantitative data used descriptive statistics i.e. percentage, mean (X), and standard deviation (S.D.), and Modified Priority Needs Index (PN_Imodified); and the analysis of qualitative data used content analysis. 

        Research result suggested that the facility management for exponential growth in health and safety of early childhood development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province was in overall at a high level (X=3.75) for the current state, and at a high level        (X =3.95) for the desirable state. Regarding the priority needs of facilities for exponential growth in health and safety of child development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province, the choice of learning center for a site visit on new system design was reported highest (PNI modified=.062), suggesting weakness and it was used to determine guidelines for facility management for exponential growth in health and safety of child development centers under the local administrative organizations of Nan Province. They included 3 main strategies and 6 sub-strategies. Strategy 1: Developing a new system design and environmental management for safety and disease-free of early childhood development center. Sub-strategy 1.1: Developing an exponential management of new system design to promote the management of environment for safety and disease-free; Sub-Strategy 1.2: Developing an exponential plan for early childhood oral and dental care. Strategy 2: Developing an exponential management system for early childhood nutritional promotion. Sub-Strategy 2.1: Developing an establishment of understanding and cooperation among personnel in exponentially planning for nutritional promotion; Sub-Strategy 2.2: Developing action goals to achieve the plan to promote early childhood development and nutrition. Strategy 3: Developing the construction of experiences about early childhood development among personnel of early childhood development facilities. Sub-Strategy 3.1: Developing the transcription of lesson-learned to formulate an exponential plan to foster the improvement of early childhood development facilities; Sub-Strategy 3.2: Developing re-assessment and re-comparison of exponential planning to foster the improvement of early childhood development facilities.