The focus of early childhood education development in China has been shifting from quantity expansion to quality improvement, and narrowing the quality gap between urban and rural kindergartens (URKs) has become the most urgent and challenging issue. The study attempted to find out what differences existed between qualities of URKs and how the gap was narrowed down in W county. The authors adopted self-developed questionnaires respectively for teachers, preschool principals and parents, as well as observation scales for education professionals to collect baseline information and rating data. 14 focus group interviews were also conducted on administrators and policy makers from educational department of the county, addressing the questions of the status and causes of disparity between URKs, what strategies and policies were adopted to narrow the difference, and what are the effects and implications of such policies. The authors collected valid questionnaires from 891 parents and 184 teachers in 11 rural and 13 urban kindergartens. The result showed that, from parents’ perceptions, five aspects (namely, the supplied educational opportunity, the tuition fee, satisfaction about the schooling condition, and the overall educational quality, satisfaction with teachers) of the quality differences between URKs were not significant. Teachers’ career status, including their career identities, teaching goals, commitment to profession, competency, career planning, also showed no significant differences between URKs. The result from observation and evaluation of 26 half-day teaching activities (including body-cared items, class teaching, game teaching from 4 rural and 9 urban kindergartens) showed no significant differences among them. Through qualitative analysis of data from focus group interviews, the study found that the county implemented a PPAJS (Public, Professional, Alliance, Joint-action, Symbiosis) model successfully. PPAJS was a result of joint-action alliance among government, professional institutions and local kindergartens. Implications suggested that PPAJS model was effective to promoting balanced development in W county.
