Suspension and expulsion, typically thought of as discipline practices for high school students, occur at the early childhood level. In fact, 3- and 4-year old children are suspended and expelled from school at a rate three times that of their teenage counterparts (Gilliam, Foundation for Child Development, 2005). In many states, legislation…

There is a need for robust evidence about which educational interventions work in preschool to foster children's cognitive and socio-emotional learning (SEL) outcomes. Lab-based individually randomized experiments can develop and refine such interventions, and field-based randomized experiments (e.g., cluster randomized trials) evaluate their…

Childcare centers have faced many stressors both during and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on stress and coping theories, this study explores how the pandemic affected childcare center practices and how center directors responded. Childcare directors were surveyed to explore their perspectives about the pandemic's effects on teachers and…

Background: Research finds center-based child care typically benefits children of low socio-economic status (SES) but few studies have examined if it also reduces inequalities in developmental disadvantage. Objective: I test if the length of time in center-based care between ages one and three years associates with child development scores at age…

Object exploration is considered a driver of motor, cognitive, and social development. However, little is known about how early childhood education and care settings facilitate object exploration. This study examined if children's exploration of objects during free play was facilitated by the use of particular spatial components (floor, tables,…

There are limited studies involving preschool children and phenomena such as harassment, bullying, exclusion and rejection. This study explores the relations between 4- to 6-year-old children's experiences of being frequently harassed in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions, their overall feeling of subjective…

Low pay and unequal wages make it hard to recruit and retain the high-quality early educators that young children need to thrive in early care and education (ECE) programs. Not only are early educator wages lower than those of comparable workers, but there may also be racial and ethnic wage disparities within the ECE workforce. Using a…

Do centre-based early education programmes prepare children for starting school? We wanted to find out if attending a centre-based early education programme was better than: (a) not attending any programme; (b) receiving a standard pre-school programme; and (c) if there were any unwanted effects. We found 32 studies involving 16,899 children aged…

This study aimed to determine the effects of the Active Early Learning (AEL) childcare center-based physical activity intervention on early childhood executive function and expressive vocabulary via a randomized controlled trial. Three-hundred-and-fourteen preschool children (134 girls) aged 3-5 years from 15 childcare centers were randomly…

The aim of our study is to identify elements of young children's shared humour by observing children's own expressions in the everyday life of early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres aged 1-6 in three Finnish ECEC centres. Our analysis shows that young children's humour plays an important role in routine transitions and play situations.…

Using the concept of a trajectory, we trace one child's negotiation of his sense of belonging within his early childhood centre through analysing his participation in conflict and conflict-like interactions. Video data were gathered 2 days a week over a 6-month period from the start of his attendance at the centre. Sociolinguistic interactional…

Adults' behaviour in interactions with children is assumed to influence children's playfulness. However, little is known about how the quality of teacher-child interaction in early childhood education and care affects the development of children's playfulness, although the interaction quality has been identified as a strong predictor of children's…

Whether intended by education policy (e.g., via school entrance examinations) or unintended (e.g., via social stratification), selection effects in education (who goes where, gets what, and how much) shape educational opportunities -- influencing the life chances of individuals and groups, and the structure of societies. However, within the…

This paper explores children's understandings of Acknowledgement to Country practices and Aboriginal knowledges. Guided by the relational lenses of respect, responsibility and reciprocity, we conducted focus groups with children across five Australian early education centres. We found that Acknowledgement practices were evident through recitation…

Parents (N = 123; 90% Caucasian; 99% with college experience) of young children (ages 1-5) were asked to list the top three reasons for their childcare choices. Parents were also asked a hypothetical question about how their childcare choices would have changed if money were no object. Results showed that the majority of participants who chose…