"Research Findings:" Despite the prevalence of integrating early childhood education (ECE) into formal schooling, there is limited evidence on how school-based ECE affects children compared to other types of ECE, particularly in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Therefore, this study examined school-based ECE programs compared…

Early childhood education (ECE) is important to provide the necessary support for children's healthy development during the preschool period. We evaluated whether ECE positively impacted early childhood development in Lao PDR. We pooled two rounds of nationally representative cross-sectional household surveys -- Lao Social Indicator Surveys…

Research Findings: The Quality of Care for Infants and Toddlers (QCIT) observational measure was designed to address the need for a valid and reliable measure of the quality of caregiver-child interactions that could be used in both center-based and family child care (FCC) settings, and with diverse populations. Results from a psychometric field…

Background: State-level child care quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) have been implemented in a majority of states in the U.S.A. One goal is to improve developmental outcomes for young children, especially from families with fewer resources. Research is needed to determine if QRIS can produce quality improvements that will support the…

This study investigates the relationships between preschool quality and children's learning and development from fall to spring of 1 school year through the analysis of child- and program-level data from approximately 70,000 children, ranging in age from 4.5 to 5.5 years old, in 1,700 Quality Counts California (QCC) rated preschool programs, the…

Research increasingly acknowledges the importance of high quality interactions that support and extend children's thinking. Few measurement tools currently exist, however, to capture this specific aspect of process quality. The Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scale was developed to assess interactional quality in early…

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducted a landscape evaluation of early childhood programs in Indiana (IN) between the spring of 2021 and the summer of 2022. The evaluation included assessments of infant, toddler, and preschooler children's developmental status in multiple domains at two time points to measure growth.…

Governments around the world are increasing investments in early childhood education as a way to promote children's learning and development. As research grows on the longer-term effects of early educational programs, some have hypothesized that sustained impacts may depend on the quality of children's subsequent classroom environments and may be…

This qualitative study explored preschool teacher beliefs and practices in relationship to observed classroom quality and student outcomes. A phenomenological approach framed the design of the research collected from seven preschool teachers in a large urban school district in Western NY. Teachers were asked two questions about student learning…

The current study examined whether young children's executive functions and emotionality are related to childcare experiences and whether they work as mediators explaining the associations between childcare experiences and early school outcomes. Findings from a national sample of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)…

The standard model of the role of early experience in human development assumes that children's environments in their first years of life are dominant influences on who they become as adults. The standard model favors interventions to improve children's long-term outcomes that start early in life and are intensive in time and attention from…

The recent attention being given to early childhood trauma and its negative effects on long-term learning and development has led many policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to focus on developing practices that support children and families who are experiencing trauma. Given the fact that many young children spend a significant amount of…

Preschool programs have expanded rapidly in low- and middle-income countries, but there are widespread concerns about whether they are of sufficient quality to promote children's learning and development. We conducted a large school-randomized control trial ('Quality Preschool for Ghana' -- QP4G) of a one-year teacher training and coaching…

"Inside PreK Classrooms" provides school leaders with much-needed guidance and knowledge to ensure quality instruction for their youngest students. Based on their extensive experience working with children and educators, the authors bring readers inside real classrooms, where teachers are grappling with the "big ideas" that lie…

Discourse on quality, within the context of childcare, has moved beyond the level of licensing to consider children's right to belong. Within Western Australia (WA), there has been a paradigm shift as international research literature on quality childcare has advocated the long-term benefits for individuals and the community when children…