Structural quality for policy implementation in Malaysian public preschools: a stakeholder-based case study

This study investigates the structural quality elements required in Malaysia’s federally funded preschools from stakeholders’ perspectives and identifies the challenges and barriers to their implementation within the Malaysian public preschool programme. While previous research has largely focused on process quality and its relationship with structural quality variables, limited attention has been given to structural quality features in promoting high-quality preschool programmes. Addressing this gap, the study aims to propose a framework to support the standardisation of structural quality based on stakeholders’ inputs. A single case study design was adopted, involving policymakers, policy implementers, and policy receivers. Data were collected through interviews, document reviews, and visual instruments. Thematic analysis was utilised for interview and photographic data, while content analysis was employed for document analysis. The findings reveal three core structural quality elements essential in the Malaysian preschool context: human, conducive environment, and other supporting factors, with teacher assistants identified as a newly significant structural quality element. From the policymakers’ perspective, four major challenges emerged - planning and monitoring, governance, evaluation and accreditation, and leader identification. The policy implementers’ perspective revealed challenges related to resource constraints, capability and capacity, and adaptive implementation, while the policy receivers highlighted issues concerning parents’ perceptions, expectations, involvement, and responsibility. The study further highlights the importance of collective support and shared responsibility among these tripartite stakeholders. This research adds to the field by proposing a framework that incorporates a 360-degree perspective of key stakeholders and outlines a minimum structural quality standard that allows for contextual and situational adaptation rather than a rigid uniform approach. This study contributes three principal novelties to the existing literature. First, it advances the understanding of structural quality elements in public preschools by integrating top-down and bottom-up policy implementation approaches and outside-in Katz’s model of childcare quality through the perspectives of tripartite stakeholders, alongside Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory in conceptualising structural and process quality elements. Second, the study employed the visual technique as an alternative to conventional observation methods during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby contributing a relatively novel methodological approach to educational research. Third, the findings identified teacher assistants as a significant structural quality element in preschool programmes, despite receiving limited emphasis in previous studies. As an exploratory qualitative study, this research provides initial insights into preschool structural quality and recommends future quantitative studies apart from investigations in rural and remote areas to enable broader generalisation across Malaysia’s public preschool sector.