Abstract
Nowadays, Chinese child care workers agree that it is important to encourage young children's initiative and sociality through play. But Chinese parents want their children to acquire knowledge at kindergarten. The purpose of this study is to examine how Chinese child care workers care for young children in a play setting. Chinese child care workers are in a transitional stage of early childhood education, which is required to encourage initiative, sociality and knowledge. We observed Chinese child care workers' behavior in play settings, and analyzed them. The Chinese play setting is concerned with caring for children en masse and Chinese child care workers mainly encouraged knowledge. But they respected the children's individuality and we saw that they made an effort to encourage young children's initiative. We were not able to see, however, that they respected the social relationship between children. They didn't encourage young children's sociality. We discussed the challenge of Chinese early childhood education as it is now and in the future.
