In the Republic of Ireland there has been substantial investment in Early Years provision. The number of different types of settings for pre-school children and the associated research has grown significantly. This paper contributes to existing knowledge by reporting the findings of a qualitative participatory study carried out in the Republic of…

Research Findings: This study evaluated the impacts of the Summer Preschools Program on 5-to-6-year-old Syrian refugee and local children from vulnerable communities of Turkey. Developed as a community-based contextually sensitive early intervention model, the program aimed to promote developmental well-being and school readiness of children from…

Teachers in early childhood education (ECE) settings are central to providing children with high-quality experiences that promote both early development and long-term well-being; unfortunately, rates of teacher turnover are high in ECE settings. There are strong theoretical reasons to assume turnover is negatively linked with children's academic…

In Victoria, Australia, the transition from preschool to compulsory school education is impacted by systemic disconnections in organisation, pedagogical thinking and curricula. These disconnections can create discontinuities in children's experiences, and continuity of learning. At a policy level, attempts have been made to build cooperative…

Will students who have not mastered kindergarten skills benefit from another year of kindergarten before going into grade one? It has been suggested that there is no other topic in education that has such a wide difference of opinion as those researchers who do not advocate retention and those who are convinced that a child should be given another…

We systematically examine the existing evidence and compute meta-analytic averages for the effects of scaled-up, publicly funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programmes in the United States on student mathematics and reading achievement. The analysis is restricted to experimental and quasi-experimental research designs with the highest internal…

Historically Danish preschool has emphasised play and downplayed curricular planning. Over the last 20 years, there has been heightened emphasis on learning and goal orientation. This article explores the consequential framing of play as result of that shift. This is done first by discussing the changes in policy and discourse in Denmark in…

This study examined parents' and teachers' social constructions of disability, school readiness, and the transition to kindergarten process for children with disabilities who participated in a self-contained preschool special education (SPED) class, called a special day class (SDC). The 12 participants included parents of children with…

Decades of research suggest that both Head Start and public pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs boost low-income preschoolers' kindergarten skills. What is not yet well understood is whether there are relative advantages of transitioning from Head Start after 1 year into a school-based public pre-k program for the year immediately before…

Social-emotional skills are essential for preschool children's mental health and later school success. Considering the variety of school-based interventions aiming to target SEL development, it remains unclear what programs can be considered evidence-based, and what features characterize well-established programs. Hence, the current systematic…

Self-regulation, an increasingly focus of social-emotional learning curriculums for over twenty years according to Zimmerman (2008), provides students with the ability of "setting goals, selecting strategies, and self-monitoring their effectiveness" as opposed to waiting for others to redirect their behavior (p. 166). Prekindergarten…

In the present study, we investigated the relative impact of age- versus schooling-related growth in school readiness skills using four modeling approaches that leverage natural variation in longitudinal data collected within the preschool year. Our goal was to demonstrate the applicability of different analytic techniques that do not rely on…

In the present study, we investigated the relative impact of age- versus schooling-related growth in school readiness skills using four modeling approaches that leverage natural variation in longitudinal data collected within the preschool year. Our goal was to demonstrate the applicability of different analytic techniques that do not rely on…

The interrelationships between math and behavioral skill development prior to school entry are not well understood, yet have important implications for understanding how to best prepare young children for kindergarten. This study addresses this gap by utilizing a sample of 1,750 children (53% male; 47% White, 16% Black, 16% Hispanic, 8% Asian, and…

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is a widely administered measure of classroom quality that assesses teacher-child interactions in the domains of Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support. We use data from an evaluation of state-funded prekindergarten provided to 684 children from families with low incomes…