Research Findings: Several barriers can impede the use and effectiveness of intensive professional development programs, such as courses and coaching, for educators across today's mixed delivery early education system. The present study introduces and tests a light-touch text message-based approach to encourage educators' use of two high-quality…

"Research Findings:" The influence of early childhood teachers' professional development on fundamental movement skills remains unknown in the literature. The purpose of the present study was to examine how early childhood teachers' professional development in physical education (PE) contributes to predicting children's fundamental…

High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) - particularly care defined by highly responsive interactions between educators and children - has the potential to have lasting positive impacts on children's development. While there is variability in the level of quality among early education and care settings, professional development for…

"Research Findings": Early childhood workers (ECW's) play a pivotal role in shaping children's emotional competence. This study examined the efficacy of Tuning in to Kids for Kindergarten Teachers (TIK-KT) used with CLASS observations to improve ECW's emotion socialization, kindergarten emotional climate and children's functioning. Five…

Research Findings: This is an evaluation study of the effectiveness of an online early mathematics professional development program for early childhood teachers. The eight online courses, along with the Math at Home: Early Math Matters website and resources, introduce early childhood teachers to mathematical concepts such as math literacy, number…

Research Findings: High quality STEM professional learning is necessary for supporting early educators to implement early childhood STEM education in ways that promote young children's development. This is particularly important for educators serving young children of color or from under-resourced backgrounds who have few STEM early learning…

In the U.S., one-third of preschool children attend programs run by childcare centers. Childcare centers are generally isolated and under-resourced businesses, often challenged by high rates of teacher turnover and inconsistent financial support. Correspondingly, childcare centers often struggle to provide high-quality educational experiences for…

Research Findings: The present study explored the extent to which teachers' participation in professional development focused on children's social-emotional learning moderated the relation between self-reported burnout and teacher-child interactions. The sample included 307 Head Start preschool teachers who participated in a large randomized…

This pilot study conducted an initial evaluation of the Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education (CIRCLE) Infant-Toddler Teacher Training program. The program is unique in three ways: 1) use of an online platform with courses that explain social-emotional, language, and literacy development in young children…

Developing strong language and communication skills in the first years of life provides young children with a foundation for a number of positive outcomes, including school readiness, early literacy skills, and self-regulation. High quality language supports in early childhood education programs are key to this development. Part of providing these…

Research Findings: This study uses data from a comprehensive meta-analytic database of early childhood education (ECE) program evaluations published between 1960 and 2007 in the United States to examine the incremental effects of adding enhancement program components to ECE programs on children's cognitive abilities, pre-academic skills,…

This study examined how partnerships between early care and education providers were developed and how they worked together to deliver comprehensive, high-quality services to infants and toddlers from low-income families. Survey data were collected from 220 Early Head Start (EHS) program directors and 386 child care center directors and family…

Research Findings: In this non-experimental study, the research team analyzed data from a randomly selected sample of child care programs in Maryland and Vermont to understand what characteristics contribute to collaboration success. The team also examined the relationship between collaboration success and measures of child care program quality.…

Research Findings: This study examined the impact of MyTeachingPartner-Math/Science, a system of math and science curricula and professional development, on the quality of teachers' interactions with children in their classrooms. Schools were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 intervention conditions (Basic: curricula providing within-activity, embedded…

This article tests the hypothesis that children's learning environment will improve through a social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention that provides preschool teachers with new skills to manage children's disruptive behavior by reporting results from the Foundations of Learning (FOL) Demonstration, a place-randomized, experimental…