Early Childhood Research Quarterly最新文献

Children's mathematical development in the early years is critical for their future academic success. Based on Bandura's (1986) triadic reciprocal model of children's cognitive development, this study examined the reciprocal relations between children's attitudes toward mathematics, mathematics fluency, and home numeracy activities in 248 Chinese preschool children (123 boys; mean age = 52.43 months, SD = 4.65). The children and their caregivers were assessed at three time points from the second preschool year to the third preschool year, with intervals of five to seven months between time points. The cross-lagged results indicated that children's attitudes toward mathematics at Time 1 were associated with the frequency of operational, mapping, and informal numeracy activities at Time 2. However, mathematics fluency performance at Time 3 was predicted only by operational activities at Time 2. In addition, children's mathematics attitudes and fluency performance were reciprocally correlated (i.e., mathematics attitudes at Time 1 contributed to children's mathematics fluency at Time 2, which in turn, contributed to their mathematics attitudes at Time 3). This study highlights the active role played by young children in changing the home numeracy environment and developing their mathematical abilities.

Helping other people benefits children and is fundamental to a functioning society. A novel training, Raising Helpful Toddlers (RHT), focuses on beneficial Indigenous heritage parent socialization practices previously described. RHT participants were thirty U.S. toddler parents/caregivers, aged 28–46, 26/4 female/male ratio; 73.3 % White, 13.3 % Asian, 6.7 % African or Black/African American, 3.3 % Asian and White, 3.3 % American Indian and Hispanic, and highly educated on average, with children aged 12 to 48 months. RHT consists of a 2-hour online training, followed up with daily logs and interviews to support the training while collecting qualitative data. Feasibility was indicated by high rates of parent recruitment, satisfaction, and use of RHT strategies. Average parenting self-efficacy increased at post-test, with a moderate to large effect size, according to a repeated-measures t-test, t(28)=3.792, p < .001, d = 0.58. Many parents reported improvements at post-test including less stress when doing chores and changed beliefs, actions, and speech. Results suggest that parenting practices described in Indigenous-heritage families can be beneficial across cultural contexts. Keywords: Indigenous, Parenting, Family, Intervention, Early Care, Early Education, Prosocial Behavior, Moral Development

Math ability is critical to children's future school and career success, and prior studies show that flexible attention to magnitudes (FAM) predicts children's future math abilities over and above other early math skills. FAM broadly refers to the ability to switch flexibly between attending to different dimensions of magnitude (e.g., size and numerosity). In the current study, we created an intervention using number books to test, for the first time, the malleability of children's FAM ability. A randomized experiment was conducted with 116 preschool-age children (Mage = 55.6 months; 54.3 % female) to test our hypothesis that FAM ability is malleable and can be trained using number books. The intervention included four conditions to which children were randomly assigned: size-to-number, mixed, conventional counting, and non-numerical. The experimental conditions were size-to-number and mixed, while the conventional counting and non-numerical conditions served as controls. Consistent with our hypothesis, children significantly improved in FAM task performance from pre- to post-intervention within the experimental groups, but not within the control groups. Furthermore, children in the two experimental conditions combined significantly improved number line estimation scores from pre- to post-intervention, unlike the combined two control conditions. Implications of these findings on the development of future FAM interventions are discussed.

In 2019, Chicago began transitioning from a targeted pre-K program to free, full-day universal pre-K (UPK). By design, the transition intended to expand capacity over a few years, prioritizing access in more disadvantaged areas before moving on to more advantaged areas. We analyzed the transition path, showing capacity and enrollment over time across neighborhoods categorized by poverty rates, racial and ethnic composition, and economic resources. We also used a difference-in-differences approach to examine the causal impact of the expansion on access and explore implications for equity. We found that Chicago's UPK increased 4-year-old enrollment in free, full-day pre-K programs in Chicago Public Schools, largely through replacing half-day seats with full-day seats, with no negative effect on 3-year-old enrollment. We also found that capacity and enrollment generally were expanded earlier in neighborhoods with higher levels of disadvantage. Importantly, all communities across the city experienced increases in capacity and enrollment through the UPK expansion, suggesting it is possible to expand access across sociodemographic groups without compromising access for children living in historically underinvested neighborhoods. As local efforts across the nation expand to increase access to publicly funded programs, the Chicago UPK expansion can serve as a model.

For refugee caregivers who may live in remote areas or be a highly mobile population, creating parenting programs that fit their needs and accommodate their mobility can be highly beneficial. In this article, we evaluate a 6-month, audio-only early childhood development (ECD) intervention delivered via phone (3 calls per month) to caregivers of Syrian and Jordanian backgrounds in Jordan. A sample of stipended community health volunteers (CHVs; N = 99) and their caseloads of caregivers (n = 2,298) was randomized to calls with health and nutritional content (control group) or calls with health, nutritional, and added parenting and caregiver-focused content (including content adapted from the Reach Up and Learn model). Hypothesized outcomes included reduced caregiver depressive and anxiety symptoms, parenting stress, and harsh discipline; increased parent-child learning activities and parenting self-efficacy. Exploratory outcomes (all caregiver-reported) included child development; and caregiver engagement in activities related to health and child learning following the calls. Exposure to the treatment condition resulted in a statistically significant reduction in caregivers’ depressive symptoms (d=-0.11). No other statistically significant impacts were found. Implications of these findings for caregiver interventions are discussed.

Latino parents support children's academic skills through their involvement in daily living activities. Prior work has focused on conventional literacy (e.g., book reading) and numeracy activities (e.g., teaching numbers). Less-visible home activities that are high-priority, high-value cultural practices in Latino communities are food sharing (e.g., eating together) and food-related household chores (e.g., grocery shopping together). This study examined whether food sharing and food-related household chores contributed to children's academic skills beyond conventional literacy and numeracy activities, in a sample of 152 Latino parents from low-income households and their kindergarten children (M age = 67.24 months; 51.32% female). At the beginning of kindergarten, parents completed a home learning activities questionnaire and children's literacy and math skills were assessed. We found that food sharing, but not food-related household chores, positively related to children's literacy skills (vocabulary), beyond conventional literacy and numeracy activities. Food sharing and food-related household chores did not relate to children's math skills. Findings suggest the need to consider food sharing and food-related household chores as part of the constellation of Latino home learning activities that are likely to support children's academic skills.

Enhancing access to high-quality early childhood education (ECE) represents one promising pathway toward reducing the disparities in school-related outcomes for children from under-resourced and minoritized communities. In this paper we describe the Trauma- and Resilience-informed Early Enrichment (TRiEE) initiative, an innovative community schools (CS) approach to ECE that was designed to bolster the capacity of public pre-K programs to provide holistic, family-centered, and trauma-informed services. As such, TRiEE features the integration of trained psychiatric social workers (PSWs) into one public school district's set of early education centers (EECs). We hypothesized that this approach to ECE could be positively associated with the acquisition of key skills that are foundational to children's school readiness. Student-level de-identified administrative data, drawn from the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP), was obtained from twenty-four TRiEE-affiliated EECs in a large, urban public school district over the course of three academic years. Results from mixed-effects models showed that students at sites actively implementing TRiEE demonstrated significantly greater rates of improvement in socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical outcomes (all p < 0.05) in comparison to children participating in sites which were not yet actively implementing TRiEE.

The purpose of the current study is to use secondary data to examine the extent to which the ECERS-3, specifically the factor structure, is equivalent across Black and Latine/Hispanic teachers, racial and ethnic classroom composition, and race/ethnicity of students. Data were drawn from a large-scale 2015-16 validation study of the ECERS-3 in three states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington) that were using the ECERS-3 as part of their quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS). Approximately 1,063 classrooms serving children between the ages of 3 and 5 were included in the final sample, and about 69 percent of the teachers identified as White. Findings revealed that the basic factor structure of the ECERS-3 was similar in the sample of classrooms when compared across lead teacher race, classroom racial composition, and lead teacher-child match; however, some differences were found in factor loadings and item thresholds. These findings have implications for ensuring that measures to assess global quality consider differential effects of race of the teacher, child, and classroom composition.

The child-centered beliefs held by educators in early childhood education (ECE) are important in high-quality interactions between children and adults and are central to the recent policy emphasis on childcare quality. Using a national ECE workforce sample of home- and center-based centers from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (N=7,505), this study examined the relationships between professional development experiences and ECE educators' child-centered beliefs measured by a revised Parental Modernity Scale. We focused on the three PD models of mentoring and coaching, workshops, and college courses, and found that attending college courses was related to greater child-centered beliefs in home-based educators. Mentoring and coaching were found to effectively promote center-based educators’ beliefs. In terms of the contexts that support PD participation in home- and center-based childcare programs, our findings suggest that providing more opportunities to participate in coaching and college courses can offer effective support and thus improve ECE quality. The policy and practical implications of the findings are discussed.