This paper explored the challenges to the infant care profession in Hong Kong crèches, with an aim to contribute to the existing early childhood care literature for reference and comparison elsewhere. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 55 childcare workers and 12 supervisors, followed by interviews with some selected participants to examine…

Although the first three years of a child's life are a distinct developmental period, little information is available about the specific knowledge, skills, and other attributes (that is, competencies) that are essential to the practice of teaching and caring for infants and toddlers (I/T) and are needed to support optimal development. Identifying…

The early childhood education care (ECEC) practitioner landscape is complex and encompasses many roles including center-based and school-based administrative, teaching, and support staff as well as home-based unregulated child care family child care (FCC) providers and home-based regulated (e.g., registered or licensed) FCC providers who…

The years from birth to five are critical for building the emergent literacy skills that precede learning to read and write. Early childhood education and care services are in a unique position to support emergent literacy development, particularly for children in socio-economically disadvantaged communities. This article reports the findings of a…

This report presents key findings from the four years of the Quality Support Program (QSP). The QSP is an initiative of, and funded by, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education Early Childhood Education Quality Assurance and Regulatory Services Directorate (NSW DoE), involving the delivery by Australian Children's Education and Care…

Childhood adversity is strongly associated with poor health and well-being in childhood and adulthood. Young children are at greatest risk during their developmental years. Child care providers can participate in preventing the impact of adversity on children by becoming communities of support for families in need. This project aimed to explore…

This is the first of two briefs the Birth to Eight Collaborative will publish following their 2019 first annual landscape of early childhood education and care programs in Boston (see ED606431). In this brief, the authors report on important questions to help monitor the long-term impact of the COVID pandemic on the child-care sector local to the…

Responding to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) "Early Years Workforce Strategy 2012-2016" and significant early childhood education and care sector reforms in the last decade, TAFE SA created a new model of long-term support and engagement with the early childhood and schooling sectors across the state. Existing vocational…

Background: With the release of 2017 Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) meal pattern, states need to determine knowledge gaps in order to develop targeted training materials and resources to aid childcare providers in achieving new regulations. Purpose: To assess the nutrition knowledge of childcare providers in regards to the…

Objective: The Healthy Environment Project (HEP) was designed to improve familiarity with attitudes, confidence and knowledge related to health-promoting best practices, as well as the implementation of health-promoting policy, system and environment best practice change in diverse early childhood education settings. Design: Pre-post study design…

This qualitative research study explored the child care search and selection process from the perspectives of families living in low-income, urban neighbourhoods in the United States. Findings based on interviews with 40 mothers and grandmothers caring for African American preschool-age children showed that child care searches began with referrals…

This study examines why African-American caregivers in low-income urban neighborhoods in the United States transition their children between different childcare arrangements involving relative care, home/family care and center-based care, based on interviews conducted with 40 caregivers from three different childcare centers in one metropolitan…

Recent studies suggest that mind-mindedness is an important element of caregiver-child interactions in family and childcare context. This study investigated caregivers' mind-mindedness in a nationally representative Dutch sample and its relation with structural quality factors (i.e., group size, caregivers' education and work experience, group…

Training courses on autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are required to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of children attending schools and care centers with a diagnosis of this condition internationally. A 14-day active learning course was developed based on three self-contained workshops which took place nationally in Iran over a 6 month…

Research shows an association between mother-infant shared reading and children's language and literacy development. Educators in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres frequently interact with groups of similar-aged infants, yet infant-educator shared reading has received little attention. This naturalistic observational study…