Early care and education settings as contexts for socialization: New directions for quality assessment

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we aim to chart a path for a new generation of early care and education (ECE) quality assessments that accurately and equitably capture key inputs to the social–emotional well‐being of the diverse population of young children in ECE classrooms in the United States. We zero in on four promising, socially supportive features of center‐based ECE settings that are actionable for research, policy, and practice: teachers' classroom behavior‐management strategies, their scaffolding of peer interactions, aspects of their own well‐being that shape their capacities to support children's social–emotional development, and indicators of bias‐free and culturally responsive ECE environments.