The purpose of this study was to examine the psychological wellbeing of infant-toddler child care teachers in a mid-Atlantic city (n = 160; 69% African American, 98% women) and to explore associations with teaching intentions and quality. Using survey measures and classroom observations, we tested associations between teachers’ adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), depressive symptoms, work-related

This study provides a comprehensive, census-level evaluation of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the county child care market in a large and diverse state, North Carolina, and the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on different types of providers and communities. We use county-level panel data from 2016 to 2020 and a difference-in-differences design to isolate the effects of the pandemic

Using longitudinal data from the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 (Baby FACES 2009), this study examines the psychometric properties of infant and toddler measures of language and cognitive development and social-emotional competence collected from multiple sources, including parent and Early Head Start staff reports and direct assessments from trained assessors. We examined

This study examined whether a shared reading intervention in preschools serving multilingual populations in Norway had effects on teacher talk quality and whether these effects mediated child second-language outcomes. Four hundred sixty-four children aged 3–5 years participated. They attended 123 classrooms that were randomly assigned to a shared-reading intervention condition or a comparison condition

Abstract not available

A vast amount of research indicates that language and mathematical abilities of young children are associated. Many of these studies operationalized language abilities using tests assessing general vocabulary knowledge. However, recent research also indicates that vocabulary knowledge that is specific for mathematics might contribute to children's mathematical abilities, above and beyond general vocabulary

The purpose of this empirical study was 2-fold: (a) to investigate the relationships between Spanish-speaking dual language learners’ (DLLs, N = 223) Spanish language comprehension skills, Spanish calculation performance, English language comprehension skills, and English calculation performance, and (b) to explore the relationship between teachers’ (N = 20) instructional activities and DLLs’ calculation

The acquisition of cardinal numbers represents a crucial milestone in the development of early numerical skills and more advanced math abilities. However, relatively few studies have investigated how children's grasping of the cardinality principle can be supported. It has been suggested that the richness of number inputs children receive influences the acquisition of cardinal numbers. The present

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) plays an important role in fostering the multilingual development of young children and their families. However, as practitioners often feel insecure or insufficiently skilled to support multilingual families, professional development (PD) is expected to strengthen qualitative interactions between staff and children, and their parents. Many studies have focused

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011, this study examined the associations between spanking experiences and children's subsequent reading and math scores. Two different groups were matched on a range of family sociodemographics and children's initial reading and math scores using entropy balancing: not spanked vs spanked (Ns=17,171–17,537); and not recently

This study examined the extent to which cumulative family risks at age 1 influenced children's school readiness (i.e., academic and socio-emotional skills) during the transition to school directly or indirectly through maternal parenting stress and responsive parenting behaviors at age 3, using 2 longitudinal data sets, one from the U.S. (the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) and the other

Informed by attachment theory and self-determination theory, the goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that behavioral engagement mediates the longitudinal associations between teacher–child relationship quality and academic achievement. In addition, in an exploratory manner, we expected to identify some additional transactional relations among these variables. Participants were 301 children

While initial findings suggested that children who are adopted (adoptees) perform less well academically, this result is not consistent across the literature. To explain these, often conflicting, results, researchers acquired a lagging view, in which adoptees need to “catch up” to their non-adopted peers. According to the lagging view, those adopted at a younger age have less catching up to do than

Can robust preschool initiatives – such as New York City's universal entitlement –narrow disparities in children's learning? Or, might the quality of pre-K sites become regressively distributed, based on racial or economic features of neighborhoods? We map levels of quality observed across 1,791 pre-k sites, 2015 to 2019, finding that those situated in economically better-off census tracts host higher

The gendered nature of children's peer relationships has received little attention as a mechanism of change for students’ social-emotional competencies. To address this gap, we tested the effects of an easy-to-implement universal intervention (Buddy Up) that paired preschoolers with other-gender peers for enjoyable, cooperative, and structured classroom activities. We considered whether the Buddy Up

In the United States, the duration of children's preschool attendance differs, with some children attending full-day preschool and some children attending half-day preschool. This difference provides uneven daily exposure to peers that may have implications for childhood social outcomes, including the formation of social networks over time. In this study, we examined the role of full- and half-day

Abstract not available

In this special issue, family engagement is defined as the intentional involvement of parents and families in their children's early childhood education (ECE) programs, activities, and services. This is a bi-directional and inclusive process that builds relationships between families and the ECE programs in which their child is enrolled and that supports family wellbeing and children's healthy development

As a means to comprehend barriers and challenges to the agenda of early care and education, this study was designed to understand the practice of expulsion and suspension in early childhood settings, particularly center-based childcare programs. Qualitative data were obtained through interviews with 9 teachers and 4 administrators from 3 childcare programs. State- and program-level policies were analyzed

Abstract not available

Media form an integral part of children's environments and represent, amongst other domains, altered sensorimotor experiences. Fine motor skills (FMS) represent a fundamental prerequisite for learning and cognition and initial work has begun to show links with screen media usage – although work is scarce and the directionality is uncertain. Therefore, using a cross-lagged-panel design with 2 waves

Research and development on remote assessments and services have been slowly progressing over the past decade in the areas of telehealth, telemedicine, and psychological e-Visits. However, much less research has focused on understanding whether neuropsychological and educational assessments can be converted for remote use with young children. In the present study, we tested the feasibility of administering

Examining the diversity of interpersonal dynamics within family systems by contrasting those dynamics in dyadic and triadic contexts provides impetus for expanding research on systemic influences on relationship development in early childhood. The collective impact of these papers spanning 7 country-cultures illustrates that paternal and maternal relationship dynamics are impacted by family composition

Children entering school with lower school readiness are at greater risk of facing adjustment problems in subsequent years. Recently, temperament has emerged as a predictor of school readiness, but whether the readiness of children with different temperament traits are differentially affected by the quality of their family environment remains unknown. This study pertained to the moderating role of

The Conners Early Childhood Behavior Short forms (Conners EC BEH[S]) is a screening tool that can be used to assess different behavioral risk in children. The factorial validity of the Conners EC BEH[S] was evaluated using data from a sample of Mexican American preschool-aged children in 2 economically stressed rural school districts. A total of 94 teachers (86 identified as Latinx) filled out the

This study utilized a nationally distributed survey to explore early childhood teachers’ experience of providing remote learning to young children and their families during the early months of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was used to analyze 805 participants’ responses to closed and open-ended survey questions. Results indicated that teachers

The COVID-19 crisis has overwhelmed and weakened the United States early care and education (ECE) sector, jeopardizing a system that was already precariously situated atop a weak foundation. While multiple national- and state-level studies have highlighted the overwhelming impacts of the pandemic on the ECE sector, little has been reported about how much variation in impacts exists, and in what forms

There is growing awareness of the impacts of COVID-19 on children, families, and more recently, early childhood educators. This study aimed to add to this research and explore Australian early childhood educators’ psychological distress and wellbeing in relation to COVID-19. Accordingly, 205 educators (117 early childhood educators, 86 leaders and 2 others) completed the Impact of Event Scale-Revised

State-level policies in Ohio during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States involved physical school closures and work-from-home requirements when possible. Presumably, these policies and resulting impacts on homes with children would alter parent time investments in their children with respect to home-learning activities. In this study, we assessed parent time investments specific

Despite strong evidence self-regulation skills are critical for school readiness, there remains a dearth of longitudinal studies that describe developmental trajectories of self-regulation, particularly among low-resource and underrepresented populations such as Spanish-English dual-language learners. The present study examined individual differences in trajectories of self-regulation among 459 Spanish-English

Children with hearing loss often attend inclusive preschool classrooms aimed at improving their spoken language skills. Although preschool classrooms are fertile environments for vocal interaction with peers, little is known about the dyadic processes that influence children's speech to one another and foster their language abilities and how these processes may vary in children with hearing loss. We

We examine children's (N = 40; 4–8-years-old) spontaneous interactions with parents and museum staff while exploring artifacts in a living history museum. Our aim was to connect the cognitive development literature on reasoning and learning about artifacts to children's daily experiences with artifacts in the presence of influential others, namely, parents and experts. Our sample of parent-child dyads

The present study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (N = 15,827; 51.1% male; 48.4% White, 13.5% Black/African-American, 24.3% Hispanic/Latinx, 7.5% Asian, and 6.3% other ethnicity) to examine the unique contribution of specific executive function processes (working memory and cognitive flexibility) at kindergarten entry on externalizing and internalizing

Teacher attunement to peer preferences in preschool was assessed as the level of teacher-child agreement on each child's preferred playmates. The associations between attunement and children's age, sex, disability status (with or without disabilities), time spent with teacher, and classroom level variables - group size, emotional support, classroom organization, instructional support, and teacher experience

Early educator well-being is increasingly understood as a critical ingredient of high-quality early education and care. The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened educator well-being by exacerbating existing stressors and introducing novel stressors to all aspects of early educators’ lives, and early educators have had differential access to resources to cope with these new circumstances. Using survey data

Promoting self-regulatory development represents a critical concern for all early childhood educational programs, and particularly those serving children at risk via poverty. Stressors related to poverty tax children's physiological stress-response systems and self-regulatory capacities, challenging healthy development. The present study examined an early childhood music intervention designed to promote

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented strains on both parents and teachers, both of whose mental and financial hardships have serious implications for young children's wellbeing. We drew on an existing cohort study of families with low incomes in Tulsa, OK when children were in their Spring of first grade in 2020. We surveyed parents and teachers – children's caregivers on both sides of the

Parent-child book sharing and reminiscing conversations are two important home activities that promote young children's early language and literacy skills. Yet extant research has focused on middle-class Anglo-European families, with relatively little attention given to styles of book sharing and reminiscing in other cultural contexts. To further explore home practices and children's development in

Currently available measures of PreK classroom quality inconsistently predict gains in children's outcomes. Extant measures may not capture the full range of instructional practices—including the degree to which children are exposed to rich content and cognitively demanding instruction—that are important for supporting the development of early language and mathematics skills. The current study leverages

This paper presents the results of an intervention study focused on understanding how a 5-month, vocabulary-focused texting program called Text to Talk can enhance home-school connections concerning vocabulary and preschool children's language learning. Classrooms (49) were randomly assigned to intervention or control status in an urban preschool program in the eastern United States. Intervention teachers

Despite strong evidence of its importance to the welfare of children and societies, early childhood education has been comparatively neglected as a policy priority both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper seeks to understand what factors have contributed to the relative lack of priority for early childhood education in distance learning and school reopening plans by applying a political

Having children of multiple ages in the same preschool classroom is a common practice, and age composition has been shown to shape children's learning. However, there is little understanding of the mechanisms that link age composition to children's development. In this study, we examined the extent to which classroom age composition shaped children's classroom engagement, as well as the mediating role

Stress and well-being are known to influence the quality of teacher–student interactions, teachers’ delivery of emotional and instructional support, and the social competence and executive function skills of young learners—dynamics that impact the education and development of young children. Even prior to COVID-19, 46% of teachers reported notably high levels of daily stress. Given the additional stressors

The current study provides the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the associations of smartphone and tablet use with psychosocial, cognitive, and sleep-related factors in early childhood development. The meta-analysis aimed to provide an overall assessment of the evidence while the systematic review offered a rich overview of the methodological approaches adopted to assess these associations

We focused on how children and adults in the U.S. solved pattern tasks and whether strategies and errors changed with age. In Study 1, 90 children (Mage = 5.4 years; 52% female; 88% White) solved a series of pattern abstraction tasks with repeating patterns that varied on 2 dimensions (shape and size). A subset of children (n = 30) also completed a mathematics assessment. Though effects were small

Early childhood education programs invest in assessments of classroom quality to enable accountability and to enact efforts toward quality improvement. The Early Childhood Environment Rating System – Revised (ECERS-R) and Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) are 2 widely used classroom quality assessments that have inconsistently been linked to longitudinal change in preschoolers’ school-readiness

Continuity of pre-k and kindergarten classroom experiences is a key area of interest for early childhood researchers interested in supporting public pre-k children's development over time. To advance the empirical evidence on this topic, this study examined whether differences in classroom experiences as children transition from pre-k to kindergarten are associated with kindergarten social-emotional

The promotion of parent-child shared book reading for the development of children's literacy is a vital component of early literacy evidence-based recommendations. A robust body of research demonstrates that, regardless of socioeconomic status, parent-child shared book reading promotes monolingual children's literacy. However, despite the growing population of heritage language learners in the United

Inhibitory control is associated with the pre-academic skills, nevertheless it is unclear the role of the diverse inhibitory control dimensions especially in the development of early literacy skills. In the present longitudinal study, the multi-componential structure of inhibitory control was investigated, and the roles of two different inhibitory control abilities were examined with respect to early

This study examined the longitudinal development of young children's informal understanding of division through fair sharing. Two hundred and twelve children were followed from the age of 4.5–5.5 over three waves of assessment. Division understanding was measured with different types of problems (same- versus different-divisor trials) presented with different situations (partitive vs quotitve). Several

Research and policy dialogue surrounding absenteeism has predominately focused on the school when it comes to reducing student absences, with little focus on the classroom. Further, there has also been minimal attention paid to effects of absenteeism beyond achievement outcomes. To address both, we focused on the classroom and asked whether classrooms with typically higher rates of absenteeism were

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine the relationships between teacher language practices in early childhood classrooms, using a systemic functional linguistic theoretical framework. We included studies with typically developing preschool or kindergarten-aged children that conducted 1 or more observations of teachers in which teachers’ talk was systematically coded for strategies that

We used latent profile analysis on a longitudinal dataset to examine changes in maternal and child mental health during COVID-19 and factors that may protect against declines in mental health. Participants were 183 low-income mothers (M = 36 years) with young children (M = 5.31 years) in the City of Toronto with data collected prior to and during the pandemic in 2020. Mothers reported on their own

Growing dissatisfaction with high-stakes uses of global early childhood classroom quality assessments has motivated efforts to identify more specific features of teacher-child interactions that support developmental growth. The current study seeks to identify specific, observable teacher behaviors that, over and above such global assessments, either promote or compromise gains in self-regulation skills

This study investigated the relationship between the development of the socio-emotional abilities of Japanese children between the ages of one and 2 years, and the quality of care they receive at their childcare centers. The participants were 872 pairs of parents (M = 34.13 years old) and their children (M = 25.65 months old) who attended one of 57 public childcare centers in urban Japan, as well as

Self-regulation skills are foundational to successful participation in society, and predict a suite of positive outcomes throughout life. It has long been asserted that free (i.e., unstructured) play is important for the development of self-regulation, but studies investigating play and self-regulation have faced empirical limitations. The current study used a large sample (n = 2213) from the Longitudinal

Question use is a key feature of high-quality language input and supports language development. The current study examined how different types of maternal questions were associated with children's language outcomes, and how the associations were moderated by children's existing vocabulary skills and family socioeconomic status. Participants were 165 mothers and their 2-year-olds from the study of Early