Early Learning System Research Articles

Ten Years of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Punjab (Pakistan): What Have We Learned?

ABSTRACT This article adopts a process evaluation approach to identify the challenges and opportunities in scaled implementation of early childhood education (ECE) in Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab. It reports findings from mixed methods, including surveys administered to head teachers, ECE teachers, and parents across 386 schools, and focus groups and in-depth interviews with 25 participants across the different tiers of government. Using the RISE framework as an analytical lens, the article specifically explores issues of delegation, finance, information, and motivation across two accountability relationships – Compact and Management – to assess the extent to which the province’s early learning system is coherent around the goal of scaling quality early learning. Research findings reveal multiple incoherences within each relationship of accountability as well as incoherences within similar elements across the two accountability relationships. The resulting insights indicate the need to strengthen the province’s early learning system and improve the flow of accountability through effective delegation, including improved coordination, communication, and feedback mechanisms; effective finance, including resources for capacitating actors across all tiers of government; effective information, especially collection and utilization of data on process quality; and effective motivation to address weaker links in teacher allocation, incentives, professional development, and academic support.

Donor Coordination and Evidence Uptake in Early Childhood Education Policy

ABSTRACT In this reflective piece, representatives of the agencies that funded and managed the Early Learning Systems Research program – the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the World Bank – take stock of recent global developments in research, policy, and financing by donors for early childhood education (ECE). A rapid increase in research on early childhood interventions has secured a consensus that in vesting in early matters for later outcomes in life. In recent years, development finance institutions have taken unprecedented steps to incorporate ECE into their policies and approaches, have helped build research capacity, and fostered communities of practice on ECE. Despite these developments, however, the share of official development assistance (ODA) for ECE remains extremely low. Limited prioritization of ECE by donors may be reinforced by a persistence of low demand for ECE financing from governments and differences in delivery mechanisms between ECE and other levels of education. The authors conclude with considerations for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in increasing donor finance for ECE.

Parental/Caregiver Engagement in Early Learning Systems: Findings From Early Learning Partnership (ELP) COVID-19 Research in Pakistan and Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Caregiver support has been identified as a key feature of systems that deliver high-quality early childhood education. The purpose of this study is to explore the degree of engagement of parents/caregivers of preschool children and the modes of learning they used in Ethiopia and Pakistan in supporting their children through home learning during school closures caused by the COVID−19 pandemic. This study is based on a phone survey of over 450 parents and 48 head teachers teachers in Ethiopia and more than 2,000 parents and over 150 head teachers and teachers in Pakistan between August 2020-March 2021. The study finds differences in the level of engagement of caregivers with young children in the two contexts, with more of the sampled caregivers reporting engaging with their children in Pakistan than in Ethiopia. There was also relatively little reported engagement of headteachers and teachers in both contexts, with much of the focus resting on the maintenance of hygiene and keeping children and families safe while learning took a backseat to some degree. There are clear differences in the use of distance learning with parents from richer socioeconomic backgrounds in both contexts better able to engage their children in high-tech learning solutions.

Bias and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Parents Accessing Care for Their Children: A Literature Review.

The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) parents of children with developmental disabilities (DDs) in health and early learning systems are largely understudied. Inclusive, affirming services are critical to timely identification and intervention for DDs. This literature review aimed to establish whether LGBTQ parents experience structural bias and discrimination when accessing care for their children in health and early learning systems. PubMed, ERIC, and Scopus were searched for empirical research from 1990 to 2020 on: LGBTQ; parents, children, families; bias, disparities, discrimination; and health and early learning services. Themes were analyzed by conceptual model bias levels, participant type, and setting. The search yielded 1,872 unduplicated records (three through hand search). Twenty-nine articles representing 26 studies in health and early learning in eight countries met the inclusion criteria. Biases common across sectors included challenges surrounding LGBTQ status disclosures; lack of acknowledgment of non-biological parents; and heterosexist forms. Knowledge gaps and negative attitudes about LGBTQ families were found among some professionals and students. Some LGBTQ parents experienced bias and discrimination while accessing care for their children in health and early learning systems. Policies and programs to implement and monitor LGBTQ-inclusive health education and evaluate practice changes are recommended to improve professionals' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Multilevel workforce development (e.g., accreditation standards, organizational audits, and training) is needed to create and sustain LGBTQ-affirming health and education environments. Honoring LGBTQ family diversity and reducing health and early learning inequities are critical for improving children's health and education outcomes.

Lead, Advise, Witness: Shifting Mindsets to Achieving Impact at Scale

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation created Starting Smart and Strong, a 10-year, place-based initiative in three California communities, to develop and test solutions that support parents, caregivers, and educators as they prepare young children to be healthy and ready for school. The initiative brings together public and private partners to create comprehensive early learning systems, with a focus on impact at scale. Seven years into Starting Smart and Strong, we offer key insights into our experiences as program staff managing this complex initiative and how our approach to scaling impact has shifted over the course of the strategy. Listening deeply to communities and honoring how they define scale and drive their scaling efforts through the systems they built resulted in creative, locally owned solutions to achieve impact. This allowed us to think more expansively about impact, which led to the development of a bifurcated scaling strategy. Looking ahead as we plan for exit from the initiative in three years, we offer reflections on how our approach to scaling impact has changed over time, where we stumbled, and how we pivoted. We offer insights into how we are thinking about supporting communities’ ownership of their own scaling journeys to sustain lasting change, and how our roles changed as the strategy matured.

Social and emotional learning in early childhood education and care: a public health perspective

Social and emotional learning in early childhood education and care: a public health perspective

Language strategies for “Early Childhood Education”? Newspeak and He Taonga te Tamaiti

The early learning action plan 2019–2029, He Taonga te Tamaiti / Every Child a Taonga, ushers in a new era of thinking about the governance of early childhood education (ECE). The policy language has changed, with a shift from “early childhood education” to the “early learning system”. This article starts from the concern that if a teacher was to search through the action plan and note where the phrases “early childhood”, “early childhood education”, or “early childhood care and education”, “early learning”, “early learning services”, “early learning provision”, and “early learning system” occur, they would begin to paint a landscape of the way in which the language of governance has been changing in ECE. In this article we ask: What does this shift in language mean for the early childhood sector? To interrogate this question, we will explore elements of the language of the plan, and question the discourse of several key changes. We begin with a turn to the theorisation of government through language via the work of George Orwell, which align with Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which informs ECE theory for policy, research, and practice, and how particular ways of thinking are produced in and by the dominant discourses of ECE.

Assessing Change and Deepening Impact in Early Learning Systems: The Formal-System Self-Assessment Tool

Assessing Change and Deepening Impact in Early Learning Systems: The Formal-System Self-Assessment Tool

Ensuring Young Children Identified on Developmental Screening Receive Follow-Up: Lessons From A Community-Based Approach Engaging Primary Care, Early Intervention, and Early Learning System Providers

Ensuring Young Children Identified on Developmental Screening Receive Follow-Up: Lessons From A Community-Based Approach Engaging Primary Care, Early Intervention, and Early Learning System Providers

Ensuring Young Children Identified on Developmental Screening Receive Follow-Up: Lessons From A Community-Based Approach Engaging Primary Care, Early Intervention, and Early Learning System Providers

States across the country have made improving the proportion of children who receive developmental screening in the first three years of life a priority. While critical, screening itself does not address the risks identified. Addressing the pathways that connect children from screening to services is complicated, as it involves connecting systems that are traditionally in siloes, including Primary Care, Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Early Intervention (EI), Early Learning, Public Health, and others. A majority of children identified at-risk on developmental screening tools are not referred to follow-up service. Providers report they are unclear and unaware which children to refer …

Implications of Full Day Kindergarten Program Policy on Early Childhood Pedagogy and Practice

Abstract The government of Ontario is instituting a comprehensive early learning system that moves childcare and the caring profession into the realm of education through the integration of early education and care. This paper highlights the need for the preservation of care and nurturing, the hallmarks of the “caring profession” within the integrated staff team in Full Day Early Learning in Ontario to ensure quality early child development outcomes and the prevention of the “schoolification” of early learning and care programs. Caring and nurturing are important elements of early childhood education practice and form the basis of effective early child development programs. The value of care in early learning, and recognition for the capacities that ECEs bring to integrated staff teams in early education must be reflected in education policy at a team, school, organizational and systems level to ensure successful staff integration and a caring learning environment that contributes to positive child outcomes.

The Case of Top Beginnings and the Missing Child Outcomes

The Case of Top Beginnings and the Missing Child Outcomes is a fictionalized case study of a set of evaluation challenges faced in evaluating comprehensive initiatives that are seeking to build systems. In this case, the issue is a multistate foundation-funded early learning system building initiative that has to date primarily employed a case study approach that has provided a formative assessment of progress in building systems. Funders, practitioners, and evaluators all have perspectives on what is needed next to inform future work. In particular, funders want to see evidence of progress and signs that there are impacts on children's development and readiness for school. The case poses fundamental questions in evaluating such complex initiatives that involve public will building and mobilization as well as implementation concerns. The case poses specific issues that need to be answered in moving to a next stage of evaluation.

Stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias.

Accounts of human fears and phobias based on current conditioning models using data from adults are examined and found wanting. Instead, the characteristics of human phobias resemble the kind of learning found during the amnesic period of infancy. As certain neural systems mature, conditioning begins to exhibit adult characteristics: context dependency, sharp generalization, and rapid extinction. Although direct behavioral control by the early learning systems wanes, the adult learning system seems to be structured at least/partially through the lasting influence of infantile experience. Under (hormonal) stress, residues of early experience are reinstated and incorporated into adult memory where they directly control behavior. This control exhibits infantile characteristics. The evidence suggests that once acquired, such conditional fears might never be eliminated using traditional extinction or countercondit ioning procedures. The view leads to a renewed emphasis upon the role of experience in human development, accepting the disproportionate importance of infant experience as the foundation upon which subsequent learning and cognitive function rest. It is plain from clinical experience that certain patients experience critical incidents in which the fear has an onset. What is particularly interesting is the fact that quite frequently these same people have been exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly in the past without acquiring the fear. It seems that for acute onset fears, there are certain psychological states in which the person is vulnerable to the acquisition of fears. To take a clinical example, in those agoraphobic patients who report an acute onset of fear, one needs to know why the fear arose on the day that it did, at the time that it did. And why do they acquire a fear