Why weren’t group size and adult:child ratio found to
affect? A typically Greek factor that might be relevant is
that, in Greece, center-based child care is traditionally
interpreted as ‘care’ rather than ‘education.’ Little attention
is paid to educational activities and the educational quality
of Greek child care centres is consequently low compared
to the quality in other countries (Mantziou 2000; Petrogiannis
2002; Petrogiannis and Melhuish 1996). If, as De
Schipper et al. (2007) argue, group size and child–caregiver
ratio matter more during educational activities than
during everyday routines and the ‘free play’ intervals,
which is plausible, the lack of educational activities in the
Greek child care centres would explain why these two
factors were limited related to the quality of caregiver–
child interactions in our study.