The capacity for growth and development is an integral part of being human. Infant social-emotional development is critically important to overall development and begins in the first months of life. These processes encompass how we relate to ourselves and others in our everyday lives (Malti & Cheah, 2021). Social-emotional development includes…

A majority of children's language learning experiences occur in inclusive early child care and education settings. Few evidence-based professional development (PD) programs exist to empower early childhood education providers to use language instruction practices with children in inclusive classrooms. There is little research on providers'…

In line with international trends in early childhood care and education (ECCE) recognising the importance of early learning, the Department of Basic Education in South Africa has pledged to professionalise the sector, increase access and improve quality. From a systemic point of view, professionalisation of the sector will require collaboration on…

Background: While parent management training (PMT) has been shown to be an effective treatment for adolescents with externalizing concerns, evidence suggests that effectiveness is not equitable across all types of families. Research suggests that caregiver psychopathology may adversely affect PMT success for adolescents. However, it remains…

How to work with older children has been ongoing question in Australian School Age Care (SAC) for over 30 years. Children aged 10-12 years are often spoken of as a problematic Other whose pose a risk to the younger children who attend SAC in higher proportions. This article aims to address the gap in research about what practices might work with…

In this article we experimentally evaluate Colombia's Think Equal program, which teaches socioemotional skills to children ages 3 to 6. Given the context of COVID-19, the original design was adapted as a hybrid model, alternating in-person and remote instruction and engaging families in the implementation of the curriculum. We found that the…

Understanding the sequential associations between caregiver responsivity and child communication is pivotal for enhancing child outcomes and guiding effective interventions. This dissertation study evaluates the LENA Start™ on caregiver-child communication, focusing on sequential association between caregiver and child communicative behaviors.…

Can at-scale, government-implemented parent training programs improve parenting practices and child development outcomes? This article presents evidence on the effects of a low-cost, group-based early childhood education program that provided parent training and direct child stimulation in rural communities, evaluated in six Mexican states.…

Purpose: Whilst an urgent need for collaboration is increasingly seen in education to better respond to socio-educational challenges, in practice, collaboration between primary school teachers and their partners is hampered by barriers. The aim of this study is to shed light on these barriers from a human resource management (HRM) angle, using the…

Research has shown the importance of responsive caregiving for fostering positive development early in life; however, tools measuring these interactions are often impractical for larger scale intervention trials and in settings with resource constraints. The present study provides reliability and validity evidence from Sindh, Pakistan for a tool…

Job crafting offers an exciting way to understand how people engineer their jobs to create more meaningful work. Work is meaningful if workers perceive their work as significant and serving an important purpose. To examine how four early childhood educators individually and collaboratively craft their work, the study reported here examines data…

Caregiver coaching in early intervention (EI) can lead to positive outcomes for young children with delays and disabilities and their families. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some EI providers reported coaching caregivers more frequently. However, EI providers' use of caregiver coaching is inconsistent, and there is a need for more…

Caregivers play an outsized role in shaping early life experiences and development, but we often lack mechanistic insight into "how" exactly caregiver behavior scaffolds the neurodevelopment of specific learning processes. Here, we capitalized on the fact that caregivers differ in how predictable their behavior is to ask if infants'…

Autism and other developmental disabilities are common in low- and middle-income countries. The World Health Organization developed the caregiver skills training programme to address the needs of families having children with developmental disabilities globally. This study explored the acceptability and feasibility of the caregiver skills training…

As early identification of autism improves, there is a critical need for interventions to support the development of social communication skills in toddlers. Caregiver coaching and parental involvement is crucial for improving outcomes and providing children with adequate hours of planned active engagement. This pilot study assessed a 4-week…