This study examined the extent to which classroom quality (emotional and instructional climate) moderates the associations between teachers' beliefs about children, self-efficacy, and children's early language gains (receptive and expressive vocabulary). The study employed multilevel modeling with 606 preschool teachers and 2,536 preschool…

The present study investigated the relationship between teacher-child interaction quality and children's social-emotional and language development. Also considered was the level/status of classroom quality in preschool setting. Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K (CLASS Pre-K), the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA-P2), and Peabody…

The present study compares the fit of two- and three-parameter logistic (2PL and 3PL) models of item response theory in the performance of preschool children on the Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. The test of Raven is widely used for evaluating nonverbal intelligence of factor g. Studies comparing models with real data are scarce on the…

The purpose of this study is to examine the bidirectional relationship between children's language development and challenging behaviors as well as the moderating roles of gender and race/ethnicity. We conducted a number of structural equation modeling analyses with a national representative sample (N = 2,462) of Head Start children from the 2014…

Research Findings: The aim of the current study was to examine the extent to which the effects of preschool classroom quality on children's mathematics is moderated by executive functioning (EF) during the preschool year. The study sample included 102 children (M age = 53.57 months [SD = 5.42]; 49% male) and one of their parents recruited from 26…

Research Findings: Are family literacy activities linked to gains in preschool-aged dual language learners' (DLLs') societal language vocabulary? To understand connections between literacy activities and vocabulary, we separately considered literacy activities in the respective heritage language and in the societal language, German, and accounted…

Research Findings: The study investigated whether preschool code-related home literacy experiences had direct associations with regular and irregular word reading in the first year of primary school as well as exploring whether there were indirect associations between these experiences and later word reading via children's language skills or…

Children start preschool with large individual differences in their early numerical abilities. Little is known about the importance of heterogeneous patterns that exist within these individual differences. A person-centered analytic approach might be helpful to unravel these patterns and the cognitive and environmental factors that are associated…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the concurrent relationships between selected teacher-rated executive function (EF) and a comprehensive array of emergent literacy skills in preschool children after adjusting for targeted covariates including at-risk status. The sample comprised 114 three-year-olds who were attending Head Start…

General measures of process quality are widely used in the early childhood education (ECE) field. However, the evidence regarding associations between the most widely used process quality measure, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008), and children's school readiness gains during the preschool year is mixed. Using…

Using nationally representative data from the Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 Cohort (n = 2,798), this study examined patterns of absenteeism and their consequences through the transition to kindergarten. Overall, children were less likely to be absent in kindergarten than from Head Start at ages 3 and 4. Absenteeism was fairly stable…

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether there are visual-spatial gender differences in two-year-olds, to investigate the environmental and cognitive factors that contribute to two-year-olds' visual-spatial skills, and to explore whether these factors differ for boys and girls. Children (N = 63; M[subscript age] = 28.17 months)…

Although extensive research exists on vocabulary instruction during book reading in preschool classroom, comparatively little research has been conducted on vocabulary exposure in classroom play contexts and child vocabulary outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine Head Start teacher and child vocabulary use in dyadic play sessions and…

Research Findings: A social validity measure was used to examine 56 bilingual preschool teachers' perceptions and acceptability of an interactive shared book reading vocabulary intervention implemented in English with Spanish-speaking preschool children (N = 334) in a dual language program model. Social validity outcomes indicated that bilingual…

The present study examines an ecological model for intervention use to explain student vocabulary performance in a multi-tiered intervention setting. A teacher self-report measure composed of factors hypothesized to influence intervention use at multiple levels (i.e., individual, intervention, and system level) was administered to 54 teachers and…