Research findings: Using a sample of 568 students from 61 kindergarten classrooms whose primary caregivers completed a questionnaire describing their child's early childhood education and care (ECEC) by year from birth to pre-kindergarten, we identified seven pathways characterizing children's ECEC experiences using a latent class analysis. Once…

Exclusionary discipline practices differentially harm young children of color. As early childhood education systems seek to close these gaps to ensure all young children have access to high quality early learning experiences, the field requires more evidence-based approaches that can be scaled and replicated. Infant and early childhood mental…

Early child care and education providers provide instruction to diverse learners, including children with developmental delays but often lack training in use of evidence-based instructional strategies to support children's meaningful learning engagement. This preliminary study examined effects of the Early Achievements for Child Care Providers…

Infants from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher-SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh-Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low-income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later…

Depression is a major global health concern, especially among mothers of young children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While various risk and protective factors have been well-established, the role of fathers in potentially mitigating maternal depression remains understudied. This study aimed to investigate the association between…

Research Findings: The amount of time and type of program that children experience in early childhood settings may be associated with children's kindergarten-entry skills, or kindergarten readiness. Taking a person-centered perspective, in the present study, we examined the extent to which reliable and unique profiles of early childhood…

Child care subsidies help low-income families pay for child care while parents work or study. Few studies have examined the effects of child care subsidy use on child development, and no studies have done so controlling for prior cognitive skills. We use rich, longitudinal data from the ECLS-B data set to estimate the relationship between child…

Although high-quality early care and education (ECE) is widely accepted as one of the most effective means for promoting early learning and development, many ECE programs have limited impact perhaps because of issues with how ECE quality is defined and measured. This study seeks to expand definitions of ECE quality by asking which preschool ECE…

With the majority of children in the United States attending early care and education (ECE) prior to kindergarten (National Survey of Early Care and Education, 2016), the opportunity to reach children early, and strengthen resilience in the context of everyday life, is profound. Yet, ECE teachers often lack professional supports to meet the needs…

This study investigates the reliability and validity of the Child Care Ecology Inventory (CCEI), a measure of the quality of family child care in the social domain. The CCEI focuses on research-based environmental features and caregiving practices for promoting positive social development in preschool-age children. A total of 198 family child care…

Increasing awareness of the vital developmental implications of the care and education of young children has led to efforts in Maryland to advance early childhood care and education (ECCE). To that end, Maryland has consolidated ECCE services into one division of the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and developed a number of…

Purpose: We sought to identify factors predictive of or associated with receipt of speech/language services during early childhood. We did so by analyzing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; Andreassen & Fletcher, 2005), a nationally representative dataset maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. We…