Weekly E-News
October 9, 2026
Hot Topics
For a limited time, Siren Films has made a new video available for free on its homepage, "In Conversation with Iram Siraj - The Power of Playful Pedagogy." In the interview, Siraj, a professor of child development and education at the University of Oxford, explores what high-quality early years practice looks like, drawing on decades of research including the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) study. She highlights the importance of balancing strong relationships with intentional teaching, and explains how environments, interactions and play all work together to support children’s development. The discussion offers practical insights into how educators can deepen learning through thoughtful, responsive practice.
In her Substack, “Early Developments,” Sara Mead highlights potentially overlooked aspects of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) overhauling Head Start Performance Standards. While most of the public comments HHS received on the NPRM focus on the new English-only mandate, elimination of child: teacher ratios, and the administrative funding cap, Mead pointed to other major concerns, including the elimination of curriculum requirements, school readiness goals, and classroom quality observations.
Mead also worries about the message the collective changes send: “That focusing on improving child learning outcomes, and implementing research-based strategies to do so, is no longer a priority for Head Start programs.” She warns that the NPRM reflects a concerning trend she has observed within early childhood advocacy: elevating child care affordability above educational outcomes for children.
“If early childhood advocates stop making the case for why early childhood matters from the perspective of children’s learning, development, and long-term life outcomes… we shouldn’t be surprised if policymakers choose to invest marginal dollars in access rather than quality, with the result that the field as a whole remains undervalued, underpaid, and under-resourced,” concludes Mead.
Check out NIEER’s research on Head Start.
NIEER Activity
NIEER Leaders Receive Innovation Awards from Rutgers University
Last week, NIEER’s Alexandra Figueras-Daniel, Ellen Frede, Elise Genao and Carmen Espinosa were recognized at the third annual Rutgers University Innovation Awards as non-patent IP innovators for developing the Self-Evaluation of Supports for Emergent Bilingual Acquisition (SESEBA) and the Classroom Assessment for Supports of Emergent Bilingual Acquisition (CASEBA). The tools are designed to support teachers and researchers in their daily work helping children develop English while maintaining their home languages and strengthening early literacy skills. Through a recent partnership with TORSH, these tools can now reach wider audiences more efficiently. NIEER was also recognized for developing the Oral Language Multilingual Learner Kit with Lakeshore Learning Materials, which helps teachers strategically support the same skills through use of various materials provided in the kits.
Learn more about NIEER’s proprietary research tools.
Teaching Strategies’ Creative Curriculum Implementation and Ecosystem Engagement Study (CCIEE)
NIEER’s working paper highlights the impact of investing in early childhood educators with results from a three-year randomized controlled trial, spanning 125 preschool classrooms in New Jersey. In this study, preschool teachers who received professional development aligned with Teaching Strategies integrated ecosystem when compared to similar teachers using the Creative Curriculum but not participating in the ecosystem showed:
- A 23-percentage point increase in teacher retention
- Higher levels of professional accomplishment and lower emotional exhaustion
- Stronger child outcomes on some GOLD subscales but not on other measures. Teacher retention was a key pathway for these outcomes.
The findings underscore a critical takeaway: sustained, aligned support for educators can improve workforce stability and benefit children’s learning and development.
Read the full working paper.
Supporting Dual Language Learners in State-Funded Preschool
Research finds that high quality preschool benefits DLLs, and benefits can be increased by specific supports for DLLs’ home language development and through engagement with their families. However, a NIEER policy brief finds that state preschool programs vary widely in their supports for DLLs, and that state policies often do not match research-recommended best practices for DLLs.
Nationally, one-third of children under the age of five are DLLs, meaning that they are learning English in addition to another home language. Both the number of DLLs in the U.S. and the number of children attending state-funded preschool programs are growing.
Click here to read NIEER’s policy brief.
Learn more about NIEER's research on dual language learners.
State Policies and Guidance Relating to Outdoor and Nature-Based Experiences in Preschool
Widespread and serious children’s health problems that have worsened in recent years may be related to decreased outdoor time, increased screen time, and less exposure to nature. These problems include increased weight and obesity, diabetes, hyperactivity, stress, asthma, allergies, and other hypersensitivity diseases.
A NIEER brief found that about half of all children ages three to five and not yet in kindergarten do not play outdoors every day. The brief also explores how state policy might better promote outdoor time in preschool.
Check out the brief here.
International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy (IJCCEP) Weekly Feature
Julianne McGuire, Danielle Gallegos, and Susan Irvine examined how infant feeding was addressed in Australian early childhood education and care policy. The researchers analyzed key national policy documents along with 28 nutrition or infant feeding policies from 19 center- and home-based services serving more than 1,500 children in Queensland. National quality standards gave relatively little explicit attention to infant feeding, while service level policies reflected five major themes: documentation, values, curriculum and pedagogy, supportive environments, and partnerships with parents. The authors argue that limited guidance and few concrete examples of appropriate infant feeding practices can create ambiguity and potential health and safety concerns for services. The findings suggest that clearer and more specific infant feeding policies could strengthen practice and better support infants’ short- and long-term health.
Publish in the International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy (IJCCEP)
- It’s FREE – article processing charges for all articles published in the journal are fully sponsored.
- The journal is indexed by Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and by Scopus.
- All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license. Authors will retain copyright.
Focus on New Jersey Weekly Feature
Join us for a BELLE Social! Meet the Author: Luzdivina Lozano
Join us October 16 at Rutgers University’s Livingston Student Center in Piscataway, New Jersey, for an evening to reconnect with participants and supporters of Building Early Learning Latiné Educators (BELLE), a project housed within NIEER.
BELLE Socials are after-school events designed to give our community a space to mix and mingle, catch up with former BELLEs. This time, we will hear from featured author, coach, and educator Luzdivina Lozano. As the Founder and Leader of Suficiente: New Latina Leadership Development Series, Luzdivina brings over 21 years of experience coaching and developing more than 100 leaders across multiple leadership roles.
ECE Research
Early Educator Depressive Symptoms and Responses to Challenging Behaviors
Anna J. Markowitz and Flora S. Ziprin, writing in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, examined relationships between depressive symptoms and behavior management practices among approximately 400 toddler and preschool teachers working in publicly funded early childhood education settings in Louisiana. The study found elevated levels of depressive symptoms across the early childhood workforce. Educators reporting depressive symptoms were significantly more likely to endorse inappropriate strategies for responding to children’s challenging behaviors. The findings suggest that educator mental health may be connected to how teachers manage difficult classroom situations and their ability to respond in developmentally supportive ways.
Ondřej Koželuh, Eva Koželuhová, and David Greger, in European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, systematically reviewed 23 empirical studies examining how classroom age composition relates to cognitive and noncognitive outcomes in preschool education. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the review found that evidence for cognitive outcomes was mixed, with some studies showing modest advantages for age homogeneous classrooms in areas such as preliteracy, early numeracy, executive function, and school readiness, although findings varied by study design, measures, and instructional context. In contrast, age heterogeneous age groupings showed potential benefits for peer interaction, social participation, cooperation, helping, role differentiation, and observational learning. The authors caution that these findings are influenced by substantial methodological variation and should not be interpreted as evidence that age composition alone causes developmental differences. The review suggests that age heterogeneity may be most beneficial when classroom organization and pedagogy deliberately create opportunities for peer mediated learning and social interaction.
Jesús del Pozo-Cruz, Rosa María Alfonso-Rosa, Zhiguang Zhang, Chalchisa Abdeta, Eva Brita Roos, Amy Sau Ching Ha, and colleagues, writing in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, examined daily steps among 3,570 children ages 3 and 4 across 44 countries. Using accelerometer data collected between 2018 and 2025, the researchers found a median of 18,542 steps per day overall, increasing from 17,502 steps at age 3 to 18,928 steps at age 4. Boys generally accumulated more steps than girls, while children living in rural areas and in low- and middle-income countries recorded more daily steps than those living in urban areas and high income countries. The findings underscore the importance of considering age, sex, residential setting, and national socioeconomic context when interpreting young children’s daily step counts.
In Learning Disability Quarterly, Gena Nelson, Soyoung Park, Sarah Quinn, Patrick Ehrman, Taylor Lesner, Marah Sutherland, Kevallyn R. Drake, Peter Boedeker, Lina Shanley, and Ben Clarke systematically reviewed 112 early numeracy intervention studies published between 2006 and 2025 involving more than 21,000 children from Pre K through grade 1. The review found substantial variation in how researchers identified children as being at risk for math difficulties, with 40.6 percent of studies not specifying how academic risk or the need for intervention was determined. Among studies reporting risk levels, samples ranged from very low to high math risk, while some studies identified risk primarily through socioeconomic status. Differences in risk identification were also associated with variation in intervention characteristics, instructional strategies, and mathematics content.
Opportunities
National Sales Manager, Professional Development, ZERO TO THREE
Sr. Project Manager of ECE Strategy, Policy, and Planning, City of Philadelphia
Sr. Project Manager of ECE Initiatives and Partnerships, City of Philadelphia
Vice President, Early Childhood Policy, Center for American Progress
Advisory Services Analyst, Early Childhood Programs, Mathematica
The Authors
Allison Muhlendorf manages external affairs for NIEER, including communications, earned and owned media, government relations, partnerships, and outreach.
About NIEER
The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, conducts and disseminates independent research and analysis to inform early childhood education policy.
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