HOT TOPICS
Supporting Children and Families Through a Mixed-Delivery Pre-K System
High-quality pre-kindergarten programs can provide numerous benefits for children and families but ensuring this is both facilitated and made more complex by mixed delivery systems.
To expand on the issue, NIEER’s Senior co-Director Steven Barnett and Assistant Research Professor GG Weisenfeld will speak on a panel at a webinar about implementation and benefits of a mixed-delivery pre-K system. Supporting Children and Families Through a Mixed-Delivery Pre-K System will be hosted by The Hunt Institute on Tuesday, April 5 at 2 p.m. EDT. Joining the panel will be Secretary Barbara Cooper of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education, and Martha Strickland, 4K State Director of South Carolina First Steps. Register here.
Towards Distinguished Early Learning Education
The General Secretariat of the Khalifa Award for Education is hosting a virtual seminar Monday, March 21 on the importance and impact of early learning on the education field. “Towards Distinguished Early Learning Education,” begins at 11 a.m. EDT and will be moderated by Philip Quirke, the executive dean of Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates. Panelists are:
- Sarah Rogers, founder, owner and CEO of Early Years Educational Services and Quest Direct in the UAE
- Dr. Asia Foster, Early Learning Program Manager, Mid-America Regional Council in Missouri
Register for the seminar here.
ECE RESEARCH
The president of the Society for Research in Child Development, Duke University Professor Kenneth A. Dodge, called for “a system of universal primary psychosocial care” to improve outcomes for children and help eliminate disparities based on race and income in his recently published presidential address.
Dodge said such a system should consist of three parts: “a comprehensive infrastructure of community resources, such as North Carolina’s Smart Start; financial supports for specific interventions, such as pre-kindergarten; and a way to help families identify and address family-specific needs, such as Family Connects.” Read the abstract here.
Self-Regulation Development Among Young Spanish-English Dual Language Learners
Researchers documented three trajectories of growth in self-regulation skills for Spanish-English dual-language learners (DLLs), with children demonstrating early, later, and intermediate patterns of growth in self-regulation skills. Boys and children with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to be in the later developing group, which showed little growth in self-regulation skills until around age 6.
The 459 DLLs in the sample were predominantly from low-income families and were assessed from early childhood through early elementary school. “Meaningfully distinct trajectories of self-regulation growth exist for Spanish-English DLL children, and associations for these trajectories with socioeconomic status and child gender, support the implementation of interventions targeting self-regulation skills for children experiencing economic disadvantage,” the authors wrote. Read the study here.
Researchers who reviewed 33 randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments found “a robust positive effect of coaching on teachers’ knowledge gains and instructional abilities, and children’s developmental outcomes.” Preschool children experienced improvement in the areas of language and literacy, social-emotional development and academic skills.
The study was written by: Weipeng Yang of The Education University of Hong Kong; Runke Huang of the University of Oxford in England; Yufen Su of the University of Hong Kong; Zhejiang Normal University in China; Jie Zhu of Zhejiang, Normal University; Wu-Ying Hsie of University of Northern Iowa; and Hui Li of Shanghai Normal University. Read it here.
Explorations on Risk Profiles for Overweight and Obesity in 9,501 Preschool-Aged Children
Preschoolers’ lifestyle and family-related factors, including parents’ body mass index and how fast they eat, are predictors of children being overweight or obese, researchers in China found.
The cross-sectional study involved 9,501 preschool-age children. The study was conducted by Qiong Wang, Min Yang, Xiangling Deng, Shunan Wang, and Bo Zhou of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. Read it here.
Researchers argued the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the U.S. “lags behind in policies and practices to develop and sustain quality ECEC leadership” compared with international initiatives in a new theoretical paper.
“Effective leadership practices have been few, isolated and lacking rigor, resulting in a shortage of evidence-based policies and practices in ECEC,” wrote Sara Movahedazarhouligh of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Rashida Banerjee of the University of Denver in Colorado and John Luckner of the University of Northern Colorado. Read the abstract here.
OPPORTUNITIES