Early Childhood Research Quarterly最新文献

Attendance plays an important role in student academic success; yet few studies examine associations between preschool attendance rates and academic skills for children enrolled in early childhood programs. To address this gap, this population-based study examined associations between preschool attendance rates and language, literacy and mathematics skill growth for a cohort of four-year-old children (N = 20,414) enrolled in a state-funded public prekindergarten program within an urban county (N = 1,720 classrooms, N = 922 programs). Measures included linked administrative data on preschool attendance and program-administered direct assessments of oral language, literacy, and mathematics. Latent growth curve analysis (LGCA) found that attendance rates were associated with greater rates of change in all academic skills across the preschool year, controlling for child demographic covariates, preschool program provider type, and neighborhood risk. In addition, higher attendance benefited children more who entered preschool with lower initial academic skills as compared to children who entered preschool with higher academic skills. Implications of the findings, including future directions, and application to early childhood education policy and practice are shared.

This study addresses the issue of equitable access to early care and education (ECE) taking the state of Hawaiʻi as an example. We used spatially-based measures of demand-adjusted slots, cost burden relative to family income, and quality that quantified the supply of ECE services within a five-mile drive, a ten-mile drive, and a 30-min public transit commute from a family's home. Multivariate spatial modeling techniques were used to predict ECE access at the community level, with median income, county of location, population density, and community ethnic composition as predictors. Results revealed some disparities, such as better slot capacity in areas that were densely populated or had a high share of persons of East Asian heritage. We also found promising results relating to slots and quality in low-income communities. The strategic location of Head Start, public preK, and classrooms sponsored by a local philanthropy created conditions where some low-income communities had very favorable access to ECE slots and high-quality programs, relative to the state overall. The spatial methods used in this study are flexible and can be adapted to answer any number of questions about access to community resources for young children and families at different levels of geographic granularity.

Young children rapidly learn facts about the world. One mechanism supporting knowledge acquisition is memory integration: derivation of new knowledge by combining separate, yet related facts accumulated over time. There are both developmental changes and individual differences in young children's learning through memory integration. However, there is little research on how everyday social interactions may promote memory integration and contribute to individual differences. Accordingly, we investigated how the everyday social interactions of caregiver-child shared book reading support 5- to 6-year-olds’ memory integration (N = 82 parent-child dyads; 47 female children; M age 6.10; 56.5 % White non-Latinx, 15 % Black, 6 % White Latinx, 5.5 % Asian, 17 % more than one race). Caregivers read a narrative book that included opportunities to integrate facts. Half the dyads were assigned to an embedded questions condition (questions on facts included throughout the book) and half to a no embedded questions condition (statements only). We measured dyads’ extratextual talk while reading for the extent to which they integrated the facts (integration talk). Children's learning was tested with both memory integration and fact recall questions. Dyads in the embedded questions condition had more integration talk. The extent to which the dyads integrated while reading predicted children's integration performance, above and beyond condition effects. This effect was specific to memory integration: integration talk nor condition accounted for fact recall. These results suggest that shared book reading can support young children's integration, especially when books engage dyads through embedded questions and dyads integrate facts while reading.

This study examined how the number of hours of early childhood education (ECE) is associated with young children's behavior problems and early academic achievement in Singapore, a non-WEIRD (“Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic”) country with families using long ECE hours. We drew data from the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study. Participants were 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 2,452). General linear models and spline regressions were utilized to analyze how ECE hours were associated with children's behavior problems and early academic achievement while controlling for child and family characteristics. On average, Singaporean children stayed 41.07 hours per week in ECE centers, with 38 % of the sampled children spending more than 50 hours per week in ECE centers. Notably, we found an inverted-U-shaped relation between ECE hours and child outcomes with a turning point of approximately 35–40 hours per week. Before the turning point, a greater number of hours in ECE was associated with more externalizing problems and higher academic achievement. However, after this point, a greater number of hours was associated with fewer behavior problems, both externalizing and internalizing, as well as poorer academic achievement. These findings demonstrate a complex nonlinear association between ECE hours and child outcomes in a context of children spending prolonged hours in centers.

The purpose of this study was to critically examine 14 early educators’ descriptions of their classroom discipline policies and procedures. A DisCrit lens was utilized to investigate if and how multiply marginalized young children may still experience exclusion. Participants described the use of discipline policies and procedures that were exclusionary, such as suspensions and ‘soft’ expulsions. Teachers also reported that they continued to be overwhelmed and frustrated by students’ behavior they found challenging, and felt they needed additional supports to effectively meet children's needs. These findings help us understand the need for more comprehensive policy reform, and continued support for teachers so that as we work to eliminate exclusionary practices, we provide teachers with a toolkit of inclusive, anti-biased, proactive, and preventative strategies they can use in its place to promote social emotional competence and prevent 'challenging' behavior.

Investing in early childhood development (ECD) is critical for individual and societal development. Variable-centered research on ECD has shown that family wealth, maternal education, and parenting practices predict childhood outcomes overall. However, little is known about differences in the ECD patterns and their predictors. This study examined the latent classes of ECD using data from three waves of the Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted in 29 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) between 2010 and 2020 (MICS 4, 5, and 6) and identified their predictors at different ecological levels. The total sample size for analyses was 226,374 (n_MICS4 = 70,082, n_MICS5 = 91,652, n_MICS6 = 64,640; M_age = 47.23(months), SD_age = 6.87). Three classes, Learning Challenged but On Track for Physical and Social-emotional Development, Academically Challenged but Approaches-to-Learning Competent, On Track for Physical and Social-emotional Development, and Competent across All Domains, were consistently identified across MICS 4–6 using latent class analysis. Three variables, all at the microsystem level, predicted class membership with acceptable effect sizes in one or more waves of the MICS data: preschool attendance, number of books at home, and maternal education. The study has implications for future research and the development of policies aimed at monitoring and supporting ECD in LMICs.

Enrolling in publicly funded early childhood programs in the U.S. often requires families to navigate a complex, multistep process. Families must pick a program, apply, verify their eligibility, and enroll. Prior research shows that families that complete this process tend to be advantaged relative to eligible non-applicants. In this study, we illuminate the enrollment pathway in New Orleans, showing that many would-be enrollees are lost at each step along the way. Next, we examine the effects of an information intervention that aimed to help families with the “apply” step. We find that a simple text-message intervention increased application rates by 33 %. However, due to leaks at subsequent steps, the intervention had no effect on enrollment rates. We discuss the implications for understanding and improving the enrollment process for publicly funded early childhood programs.

Home numeracy environment encompasses both home provision of numeracy activities for preschool children as well as parental attitudes toward mathematics. The present study investigated the mediating role of home numeracy activities in the relationship between parental academic expectations for their children and children's spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON). A total of 176 parent-child dyads from Hong Kong participated in the study where children were tested on their SFON tendency, while parents completed a questionnaire on home numeracy environment which included measures on both home numeracy activities and parental expectations for their children on numeracy performance. Our results revealed, for the first time, a mediating role of home numeracy activities—specifically operational activities—in the relationship between parental expectations for their children on numeracy performance and their children's SFON tendency. The present findings highlight the importance of a nurturing home numeracy environment on preschoolers’ SFON tendency, which has potentially far-reaching significance on children's math achievement in later years.

Students’ gains from Pre-K converge with similar students who did not attend Pre-K in elementary school. One theory for convergence is that students who attend Pre-K enter kindergarten classrooms that are skill heterogeneous, and these students are positioned near the top of the classroom skill distribution. Kindergarten teachers, however, focus their instruction on students toward the bottom of the skill distribution, which generates observed convergence. We explore this theory by analyzing data from six rural school districts in North Carolina (N = 655, aged 4–6, 51 % female, 77 % non-White). We find mixed evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our measures of kindergarten classroom heterogeneity were inconsistently related to skill convergence based on both the outcome measure and the specific construction of the heterogeneity measure, but all significant associations were in the predicted direction.

By the time children start primary school, large socioeconomic disparities are evident in their learning and development. Both pre-primary and home environments can play important roles in influencing school readiness and can contribute to disparities in early childhood development, but there is limited evidence on their relative roles in the Middle East and North Africa. This paper examines how pre-primary quality, stimulation at home, and early childhood development vary by socioeconomic status for pre-primary students in Egypt. The results demonstrate substantial socioeconomic inequality in stimulation at home, more so than in pre-primary quality and inputs, although there is variation in the degree of inequality across different dimensions of pre-primary quality. “Double inequality” is observed, where students with less stimulating home environments experience slightly lower quality pre-primary inputs. There are particularly large pre-primary inequities in structural quality (physical environment) and less inequity in process quality (pedagogy). These results suggest that targeted investments in pre-primary education in Egypt are necessary to reduce inequality in school readiness but are likely insufficient to close the socioeconomic status gap in children's development. Investing in interventions to improve vulnerable children's home learning environments, as well as investing in quality pre-primary, is critical to address disparities in children's development.