Early Childhood Initiative Research Articles

Integrating father involvement into early childhood initiatives delivered at scale: key considerations.

Early child development (ECD) interventions, usually centered around the mother, exclude fathers from contributing to childcare. Research shows that a father’s involvement in childcare can have a positive impact on the child’s growth. In this light, a trial was conducted in rural India wherein a new program component aimed at enhancing fathers’ engagement in early child was incorporated into an existing childcare intervention. The paper highlights the learnings drawn from the trial to present pathways to change, that is, strategies needed to embed father involvement as a component within the intervention ecosystem.

Segregating Gotham’s Youngest: Racial/Ethnic Sorting and the Choice Architecture of New York City’s Pre-K for All

New York City’s Pre-K for All (PKA) is the nation’s largest universal early childhood initiative, serving over 64,000 four-year-olds annually. Stemming from the program’s choice architecture as well as the city’s stark residential segregation, PKA programs are extremely segregated by child race/ethnicity. Our current study explores the complex forces that influence this segregation, including the interplay between family choices, seat availability, site-level enrollment priorities, and the PKA algorithm that weighs these and other considerations. We find that a majority of PKA segregation lies within local communities, and that areas with increased options and greater racial/ethnic diversity exhibit the most extreme segregation. We also conduct a simulation that leverages family PKA choices to maximize site-level racial/ethnic diversity and reduce between-site segregation.

A qualitative exploration of caregivers’ experiences with the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch‐up (ABC) parenting program

In the face of childhood adversity, services and interventions can improve a child's life trajectory by promoting healthy development, enhancing protective factors, and building resilience through stable and supportive relationships. One such service, a specific and highly researched home visiting intervention, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), is often provided to families through home visiting service programs. This qualitative descriptive study examines the experiences of caregivers (N=18) who received ABC as part of a statewide early childhood initiative in one midwestern state. Participants provided insight into the context of their lives before and during the intervention. They described their perspectives of the utility of the program and its influence on their family's behaviors and interactions. Findings demonstrate that coaching support bolstered caregivers' confidence in effective strategies and guided them through caregiving challenges. Caregivers observed growth in their caregiving practices, their infants' and young children's social and emotional skills, and their dyadic caregiver-child relationships, demonstrating the benefits of participating in and completing the ABC intervention.

Bringing PROMIS to Early Childhood: Introduction and Qualitative Methods for the Development of Early Childhood Parent Report Instruments.

Provide an overview of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) Early Childhood Parent Report measurement development project and describe its qualitative methods. The PROMIS Early Childhood (PROMIS EC) initiative used the PROMIS mixed-methods approach to patient-reported outcome development, with insight from the developmental specification framework to create parent report measures appropriate for assessing young children's health-related quality of life. Qualitative methods to develop these instruments included expert input, literature and measure review, and parent concept elicitation and cognitive interviews to confirm the measure frameworks, item understandability, and developmental appropriateness. Twelve measures resulted from the PROMIS EC initiative. These parent report instruments cover young children's physical, mental, and social health. The new PROMIS EC Parent Report instruments offer clinicians and researchers brief and psychometrically robust tools to evaluate young children's physical, mental, and social health outcomes. Aligned with the PROMIS Pediatric instruments, the early childhood versions enable coherent lifespan measurement starting at age 1 while maintaining developmental sensitivity.

Exploring the foundation for Collaborative Governance to support early childhood in Nova Scotia

ABSTRACT Providing the best start for our youngest generation is a growing priority internationally. Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) offers an approach to address complex system challenges and improve access to early childhood public services for young children and their families. The purpose of this paper is to use the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance to reflect on the elements of collaboration that may have influenced the establishment and implementation of an early childhood ISD approach in Nova Scotia (Canada). The provision of adequate resources for partnership development, clarification of roles and formal agreements to enable commitment and the importance of building collaborative capacity among partners was found to be critical to develop a shared vision for ISD for early childhood. The Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance provided a useful lens to consider some of the interactive components of ISD in the early childhood initiative and further, more in-depth study is warranted to determine which components are necessary for collaborative success.

Inquiring into Notions of Educational Improvement by Teaching Where We Think: Philosophical Meditations as a Practice of Teacher Education

Background This paper is part of the special issue “Reimagining Research and Practice at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Teaching, and Teacher Education.” Early childhood initiatives have joined a nexus of educational reforms characterized by increased accountability and a focus on measurement as a marker of student and teacher learning, with early education being framed as an economic good necessary for competing in the global marketplace. Underlying the recent push for early childhood education is what we see as a “discourse of improvement”—depictions of school change that prioritize achievement as reflected in assessment scores, data collection on teacher effectiveness, and high-stakes evaluation. These characteristics, we argue, foster increasingly inequitable educational contexts and obscure the particularities of what it means to be a child in the world. Purpose We use the practice of philosophical meditation, as articulated in Pierre Hadot's examination of philosophy as a way of life, to inquire into the logics of educational improvement as instantiated in particular contexts, and for cultivating cross-disciplinary partnerships committed to fostering children's flourishing. We link this meditational focus with feminist and de-colonial theoretical perspectives to make visible the role of power in the characterization of children's learning as related to norms of development, minoritized identities, and hierarchies of knowledge. Research Design: In this collaborative inquiry, we compose a series of meditations on our experiences with the logics of improvement inspired by 12 months of systematic conversation. Our data sources include correspondence between the two authors, written reflections on specific practices in teacher education each author engages with, and a set of literary, philosophical, and teacher education texts. Conclusions/Recommendations Our meditations illuminate the value of collective inquiry about what constitutes improvement in schools. We raise questions about how the measurement of learning is entwined in historical and present-day relations of power and idealized formulations of the universal “child” or “teacher” and argue that we must work together to reimagine the framings that inform our work. Ultimately and most directly, these meditations can support dynamic attempts to cultivate meaningful and more equitable educational experiences for teachers and students. Philosophical meditations at the crossroads of philosophy, teaching, and teacher education thus extend beyond critique toward imagining and enacting a better world in our classrooms, even though (and especially when) this path is not clear.

Advancing Early Childhood Development and Prevention Programs: A Pan‐Canadian Knowledge Transfer Initiative for Better Beginnings, Better Futures

Better Beginnings, Better Futures is an evidence‐based early childhood initiative that promotes the healthy development of children and families in economically disadvantaged communities. The Better Beginnings model involves the development of community‐driven programs through resident involvement that are integrated with existing services, universally accessible to all children and families in a community, focused on prevention, and ecological in nature. In this paper, we describe a pan‐Canadian knowledge transfer strategy involving attendance at workshops designed to build the capacity of participants to develop Better Beginnings initiatives in their own communities, and the impacts of the workshops on participants. Process evaluation data were obtained from participants in each Canadian province and territory immediately following the workshops (k = 12, N = 271). In addition, a smaller sample (n = 54) completed a follow‐up telephone interview 3 months later. All components of the knowledge transfer strategy were well‐received and rated highly by participants. Workshop participants indicated increased knowledge of the Better Beginnings model and high levels of satisfaction with the workshop. In the follow‐up evaluation, participants indicated strong intentions to use the information they had learned about Better Beginnings to advance the well‐being of children and families in their community. We discuss the lessons learned from the knowledge transfer initiative and provide recommendations for advancing knowledge transfer of programs for children and families in context.

Special Issue: Community, Psychology and Family Therapy

Special Issue: Community, Psychology and Family Therapy

Select Caribbean teachers’ perspectives on the socio-emotional skills children need to successfully transition to primary school

ABSTRACTChildren's transition to primary school is affected by numerous factors. Many teachers, expect that children will have the academic and socioemotional competencies to negotiate and deal with new experiences they may encounter in a new learning environment. With an aim of contextualising our understanding of the transitory period from pre-primary to primary school, the following qualitative study, focusses on the socio-emotional skills teachers believe Caribbean children need to be successful in primary school. Seventeen Grade 1 teachers, from three Caribbean islands; Jamaica n = 8), Grenada (n = 3) and Trinidad and Tobago (n = 6) were interviewed. Using Corbin and Strauss Grounded Theory [Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques to developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.], to analyse the data, three dominant themes emerged; strong resilience, the ability to deal with stress and self-regulation. These findings have implications for teacher training programmes, early childhood policies and initiatives, the increased awareness of Caribbean-centric perspective of child development and more importantly our parenting programmes.

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Teach For America (TFA) for Improving Math, Language Arts, and Science Achievement of Primary and Secondary Students in the United States: A Systematic Review

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Teach For America (TFA) for Improving Math, Language Arts, and Science Achievement of Primary and Secondary Students in the United States: A Systematic Review

Impact of North Carolina’s Early Childhood Initiatives on Special Education Placements in Third Grade

This study examines the community-wide effects of investments in two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina (Smart Start and More at Four) on the likelihood of a student being placed into special education. We take advantage of variation across North Carolina counties and years in the timing of the introduction and funding levels of the two programs to identify their effects on third-grade outcomes. We find that both programs significantly reduce the likelihood of special education placement in the third grade, resulting in considerable cost savings to the state. The effects of the two programs differ across categories of disability, but do not vary significantly across subgroups of children identified by race, ethnicity, and maternal education levels.

Child development assessment tools in low-income and middle-income countries: how can we use them more appropriately?

Global emphasis has shifted beyond reducing child survival rates to improving health and developmental trajectories in childhood. Optimum early childhood experience is believed to allow children to benefit fully from...

Better Beginnings, Better Futures: Theory, research, and knowledge transfer of a community-based initiative for children and families

Better Beginnings, Better Futures is an early childhood initiative focused on promoting healthy development of children and families in economically disadvantaged communities. The Better Beginnings approach is ecological and holistic, community-driven, integrated with existing community services and supports, and universally available to children aged 4-8 within communities in which it is offered. The Better Beginnings initiative effectively illustrates the concept of wellness as fairness through its efforts to create more just social conditions and its connection to both procedural and distributive justice, the two principles of fairness outlined by Prilleltensky (2012). Through the development of programs that support children, parents, families, and the community as a whole, Better Beginnings initiatives are able to promote children's development by building community capacity to create healthy and positive environments for children. This paper provides an overview of the Better Beginnings, Better Futures initiative from its outset in 1990 to the present, with a view towards examining the ways in which knowledge generated from such initiatives can be transferred to other communities.

Fathers' integration in Quebec's perinatal and early childhood public policies.

Mothers' physical and mental health, as well as their socio-economic status, are currently acknowledged as determining factors in the health and development of young children in Quebec. It is thus not surprising to find that the majority of government perinatal and early childhood initiatives are directed toward mothers. Yet, fathers today are increasingly involved in the care and education of their children, and scientific studies have shown that their involvement is just as crucial as that of mothers. It is recognized that a father's involvement optimizes the physical, cognitive, affective and social development of his children. The purpose of this text is to examine how fathers are taken into account in two public perinatal and early childhood policies. It has been found that fathers are virtually absent from Quebec government's objectives and orientations, and when they do appear, no concrete means are offered to reach them. Considering that health care workers have difficulty offering truly inclusive services to fathers, recommendations with regard to inclusion of fathers in public policies are necessary in order to optimize the health of children and their families.

From Birth to School: Early Childhood Initiatives and Third‐Grade Outcomes in North Carolina

AbstractThis study examines the community‐wide effects of two statewide early childhood policy initiatives in North Carolina. One initiative provides funding to improve the quality of child care services at the county level for all children between the ages of 0 to 5, and the other provides funding for preschool slots for disadvantaged four‐year‐olds. Differences across counties in the timing of the rollout and in the magnitude of the state financial investments per child provide the variation in programs needed to estimate their effects on schooling outcomes in third grade. We find robust positive effects of each program on third‐grade test scores in both reading and math. These effects can best be explained by a combination of direct benefits for participants and spillover benefits for others. Our preferred models suggest that the combined average effects on test scores of investments in both programs at 2009 funding levels are equivalent to two to four months of instruction in grade 3.

Lessons Learned About Data Utilization From Classroom Observations

Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of classroom observational assessments to monitor program quality and inform quality improvement efforts across a variety of early childhood initiatives and settings. Despite this recent increase in the use of observational assessments, there has been limited discussion about processes and mechanisms for sharing and using the data from these tools to drive program improvement. The purpose of this article is to articulate lessons learned about the data-sharing process from the embedded evaluator paradigm of assessment and feedback used in Educare, an early childhood program model, to inform the initiatives emerging in the larger field. Research Findings: The application of principles from developmental evaluation and self-determination theory resulted in numerous processes that facilitated the utilization of classroom observation data. These processes, which involved the 3 main steps of establishing a Research-Program Partnership, implementing classroom observations, and sharing the results, are described and discussed. Across these 3 steps, processes were developed to support relatedness, competence, and autonomy as critical needs to be met to facilitate data internalization and use. Practice or Policy: Implications are drawn for the larger early childhood field, including settings without an embedded evaluator.

Aligning for impact: The influence of the funder–fundee relationship on evaluation utilization

AbstractPartnerships between nonprofit organizations, as well as between public and private entities, are commonly seen as a preferred method to address complex societal problems. Within these partnerships evaluation is often mandated and considered essential, but questions remain as to the efficacy of the evaluation process. This article incorporates theories on interorganizational relationships and evaluation utilization to investigate the role of the funder–fundee relationship on evaluation use. To accomplish this task, data were collected on a statewide early childhood initiative, Smart Start. Findings indicate that a more coordinated and collaborated relationship has a positive impact on the factors associated with evaluation use and on utilization itself. Findings also suggest the importance of strategic thinking on the part of both funders and fundees when it comes to investing resources in mandated evaluations.

Beyond the Grant: How the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Went Beyond Grantmaking to Contribute to a Major Early Childhood Initiative

· The seven-year SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids) initiative, created by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), aimed at systemically linking the pre-K and kindergarten worlds as a way to position vulnerable children for greater success in the early grades.

The impact of social and cultural capital variables on parental rating of child health in Australia

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of factors broadly captured under the rubric of parental social and cultural capital on child health. The setting was 11 disadvantaged communities in Victoria, Australia during the conduct and evaluation of Best Start, an early childhood initiative of the Victorian State Government. Questionnaires were sent to parents of 3-year-old children in 2004 and 2006. The principal dependent variable was parental global rating of their child's health. Social capital variables focussed, for example, on community support for parent's child rearing practices. Cultural capital variables focussed, for example, on parent's reading to their child. Socio-economic status and other potential confounding variables were also measured. Stepwise multivariable logistic regression was used. There were consistent independent effects for the cultural capital variables-'Age started reading to the child' and 'Confident being a good parent', and only one of a number of social capital variables-'Community support for childrearing' as well as for some other variables particularly that 'Child had a chronic health/medical condition'. Dichotomizing parent's global ratings of their child's health differently had some effects on results. Cultural capital and, to a lesser extent, social capital variables were associated with parent's rating of the child's health. It is now timely to conduct and evaluate programs aimed at improving parents' cultural capital. Better measures or inventories of parent's cultural capital will be essential for this.

An International Comparison of Early Childhood Initiatives: From Services to Systems

It can be argued that much of the evidence generated in the United States on the importance of early childhood to future health and attainment has had a greater effect on the national policies of other countries than it has in the U.S., which lacks a national policy agenda for young children. However, the U.S. is not the only country to struggle with the direction early childhood policy should take: England, Canada, and Australia all started with similarly fragmented early childhood services, and have tended to favor market-based solutions with limited reliance on the welfare state. This report describes some of the components of all four countries’ efforts to develop policies that produce lasting gains for their youngest citizens. The authors also consider the implications of experiences in England, Canada, and Australia for the development of early childhood policy in the U.S. Support for this research was provided by The Commonwealth Fund. The views presented here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of The Commonwealth Fund or its directors, officers, or staff. This and other Fund publications are available online at www.commonwealthfund.org. To learn more about new publications when they become available, visit the Fund’s Web site and register to receive e-mail alerts. Commonwealth Fund pub. no. 1241.