US Early Childhood Research Articles

Injury prevention in the US Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting programme

BackgroundMany home-based interventions have been demonstrated to reduce unintentional and intentional injuries in young children aged 0–4 years, but an understanding of their inclusion in federally-funded home visiting programmes in...

Leading in times of uncertainty: Early childhood directors navigating the COVID-19 pandemic

Early childhood (EC) directors played a critical role in the successful operation of childcare centers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Directors were responsible for adhering to health and safety protocols and caring for the well-being of their staff, children, and families. Due to the need to remain open for other first responders’ families, Directors were challenged with fluctuating numbers of staff and children, and in other cases, they were tasked with transitioning their programs online to serve children. This study examines 10 US EC Directors’ perspectives and leadership experiences during the Pandemic. From interviews with the participants, themes emerged to illustrate how EC Directors utilized adaptive leadership skills and strengths-based leadership. Findings from this study are beneficial not only to understand how EC Directors led during the Pandemic, but also which skills, resources, and supports are necessary for future times of crises and challenging times. This article offers recommendations for researchers, policymakers, and other decision-makers on how best to support EC Directors in future times of uncertainty.

Science Learning in Playful Learning Environments: A Study from US Early Childhood Classrooms

Science may be a particularly vital subject in early life, serving not just to provide the foundation for future scientific understanding, but to expanding understanding and recognition of the value of young children's thinking and learning. therefore, designing learning environment to support children’s playful science learning is getting important. For this purpose, the current study was conducted to instigate how playful learning environments support children’s science learning. The data of this study was collected from four different US early childhood learning environments. The analysis of the data showed that children’s playful discoveries promotes their scientific skills and science learning. In these learning environments, children are encouraged to play more and explore a variety of situations in these learning environments thanks to the materials chosen and the design of the learning centers that encourage interaction between children. The findings of the current study suggest that exemplary practices should be developed in order to move away from traditional learning environments and to support learning through play, and to raise awareness on this issue, starting with teacher candidates.

Transforming a cemetery into a garden of languages: A justice-oriented, family-centered framework for cultivating early bilingualism and emergent biliteracy

One in three children enrolled in US early childhood programs is a dual language learner. While dual language learners have been the target of sweeping educational reforms under the guise of justice, these reforms—which pathologize dual language learners as problems to be remediated rather than assets to be developed—have largely ignored the priorities and experiences of young multilingual learners and their families. This historical omission of centering dual language learners in research, policy, and practice is unjust and has contributed to marginalization, homogenization, and linguistic erasure. Asian Americans, the second-largest group of dual language learners and the fastest-growing racial group in the USA, have remained an underexplored group of emergent bilinguals across early childhood research, practice, and policy. Thus, this article draws on the multilingual expertise of Asian American families of young dual language learners to portray how parents construct and navigate multiple knowledges, beliefs, and pedagogies of cultivating their children's dual language and literacy development. The key findings present a justice-centered framework that conceptualizes three cultivating practices across diverse spaces, borders, and time. Counterstories of planting, pollinating, and pruning position Asian immigrant parents as agentic gardeners of bilingualism and biliteracy, and interrogate the deficit paradigms that are too often placed on dual language learners to fit the narrow, monocultural, and monolingual definitions of school readiness. Centering Asian American families in generating theory and future research directions, this article envisions the future potentiality of early childhood education in pursuit of equity and transformative justice.

Applied machine learning to identify differential risk groups underlying externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors trajectories: A case study using a cohort of Asian American children.

Internalizing and externalizing problems account for over 75% of the mental health burden in children and adolescents in the US, with higher burden among minority children. While complex interactions of multilevel factors are associated with these outcomes and may enable early identification of children in higher risk, prior research has been limited by data and application of traditional analysis methods. In this case example focused on Asian American children, we address the gap by applying data-driven statistical and machine learning methods to study clusters of mental health trajectories among children, investigate optimal predictions of children at high-risk cluster, and identify key early predictors. Data from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study 2010-2011 were used. Multilevel information provided by children, families, teachers, schools, and care-providers were considered as predictors. Unsupervised machine learning algorithm was applied to identify groups of internalizing and externalizing problems trajectories. For prediction of high-risk group, ensemble algorithm, Superlearner, was implemented by combining several supervised machine learning algorithms. Performance of Superlearner and candidate algorithms, including logistic regression, was assessed using discrimination and calibration metrics via crossvalidation. Variable importance measures along with partial dependence plots were utilized to rank and visualize key predictors. We found two clusters suggesting high- and low-risk groups for both externalizing and internalizing problems trajectories. While Superlearner had overall best discrimination performance, logistic regression had comparable performance for externalizing problems but worse for internalizing problems. Predictions from logistic regression were not well calibrated compared to those from Superlearner, however they were still better than few candidate algorithms. Important predictors identified were combination of test scores, child factors, teacher rated scores, and contextual factors, which showed non-linear associations with predicted probabilities. We demonstrated the application of data-driven analytical approach to predict mental health outcomes among Asian American children. Findings from the cluster analysis can inform critical age for early intervention, while prediction analysis has potential to inform intervention programing prioritization decisions. However, to better understand external validity, replicability, and value of machine learning in broader mental health research, more studies applying similar analytical approach is needed.

Family Structure and Child Behavior Problems in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

A large body of literature suggests that children living with two married, biological parents on average have fewer behavior problems than those who do not. What is less clear is why this occurs. Competing theories suggest that resource deficiencies and parental selectivity play a part. We suggest that examining different contexts can help adjudicate among different theoretical explanations as to how family structure relates to child behavior problems. In this paper, we use data from the Growing Up in Australia: Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) to examine the relationship between family structure and child behavior problems. Specifically, we look at how living in several configurations of biological and social parents may relate to child behavior problems. Findings suggest both similarities and differences across the three settings, with explanations in the UK results favoring selectivity theories, US patterns suggesting that there is a unique quality to family structure that can explain outcomes, and the Australian results favoring resource theories.

Beyond Vaccination Coverage: Population-Based Measurement of Early Childhood Immunization Schedule Adherence.

The immunization schedule recommended by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) provides a structure for how 10 different vaccine series should be administered to children in the first 18 months of life. Progress toward US early childhood immunization goals has largely focused on measuring vaccination coverage at age 24 months. However, standard vaccination coverage measures do not reflect whether children received vaccine doses by recommended ages, or whether vaccines were given concomitantly, per the schedule. In this paper, we describe innovations in population-level measurement of immunization schedule adherence through quantifying vaccination timeliness and undervaccination patterns. Measuring vaccination timeliness involves comparing when children received vaccine doses relative to ACIP age recommendations. To assess undervaccination patterns, children's vaccination histories are analyzed to determine whether they were vaccinated consistent with the ACIP schedule. Some patterns, such as spreading out vaccines across visits, are indicative of parental hesitancy. Other patterns, such as starting all recommended series but missing doses, are largely indicative of other immunization services delivery challenges. Since 2003, at least 12 studies have used National Immunization Survey-Child, immunization information system, or integrated health plan data to measure vaccination timeliness or undervaccination patterns at national or state levels. Moving forward, these novel measures can be leveraged for population-based surveillance of vaccine confidence, and for distinguishing undervaccination due to parental vaccine hesitancy from undervaccination due to other causes. Broader adoption of these measures can facilitate identification of targeted strategies for improving timely and routine early childhood vaccination uptake across the United States.

Elusive Kodály Part I: Searching for Hungarian Influences in US Preschool Music Education

This paper is the first part of two articles exploring whether and how Hungarian music pedagogues have influenced early childhood music education in the United States. Using less-known publications and archived materials, this study moves beyond the well-documented history of the Hungarian pedagogue, Zoltán Kodály’s influence upon American general music education to focus on Kodály’s early childhood concepts, which form the backbone of the Hungarian philosophy of music education. Through the lives and work of the Hungarian and American music educators, Katinka Dániel, Katalin Forrai, Sister Lorna Zemke and Betsy Moll, I delineate a pedigree of distinguished female Kodály protégés professing a passion for Hungarian early childhood music pedagogy that did not mainstream into US preschools. In words spoken by and about these scholar-educators, my research locates the systemic and cultural factors contributing to the challenge of implementing Hungarian musical ideas in US preschools. To round out a description of the elusive Kodály influence on US early childhood music, this analysis also draws upon my own Los Angeles experience in searching for a quality Kodály education for my young toddlers.

The value added of attachment theory, research, and intervention for US child care and early childhood education: Reflecting and carrying forward the legacy of Edward Zigler.

Edward Zigler pioneered and insisted upon the integration of science, practice, and policy development to support vulnerable children and families, reduce poverty, and improve US wellbeing, writ large. His far-reaching scholarship in turn critically shaped developmental science and US policy in multiple areas. This review reflects upon Zigler's influence on US child care, Head Start, Early Head Start, and prekindergarten programs. It describes the integration of one major area of developmental science, the field of attachment theory, research, and intervention, with US child care and early childhood education programs and policy. The integration of attachment into these systems not only epitomizes Zigler's overarching canon but also has improved services and advanced attachment theory and research. Throughout the review, I suggest next steps for leveraging attachment theory, research, and intervention to improve US child care and early childhood education systems in ways that both reflect and carry forward the legacy of Edward Zigler.

Immigrant children and school bullying: the “unrecognized” victim?

PurposeThe current study aims to investigate whether the victimization of immigrant children is more likely to be unrecognized by teachers and parents and what demographic factors contribute to children's unrecognized bullying victimization.Design/methodology/approachData from the publicly accessible US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, 2011 were utilized (N = 10,587 children across 2,194 schools), and the hierarchical linear model was used for modeling.FindingsAmong all bullying victims included in this study, only 32% were recognized by both parents and teachers. Bullied children who had only foreign-born parent/s were more likely to be unnoticed by adults than those who had only US-born parent/s. Among all bullied children, girls were more likely to be overlooked by adults than boys, and Asian and Hispanic children were more likely to be overlooked by adults than White children.Social implicationsTo better protect and support all victimized children, schools should develop innovative strategies to engage more immigrant parents; teachers and parents need to learn how not to rely on social and cultural biases to guide their interpretations and response to school bullying; parents and teachers should keep good communication with children.Originality/valuePrevious research demonstrates that immigrant children have a high risk of being bullied in school, but it is unclear whether parents and teachers are sufficiently aware of their victimization. This paper is the first study to demonstrate how parents' nativity, gender and race/ethnicity are associated with children's unrecognized bullying victimization.

Developing Health Lifestyle Pathways and Social Inequalities across Early Childhood.

Lifestyles are a long-theorized aspect of social inequalities that root individual behaviors in social group differences. Although the health lifestyle construct is an important advance for understanding social inequalities and health behaviors, research has not theorized or investigated the longitudinal development of health lifestyles from infancy through the transition to school. This study documented children's longitudinal health lifestyle pathways, articulated and tested a theoretical framework of health lifestyle development in early life, and assessed associations with kindergarten cognition, socioemotional behavior, and health. Latent class analyses identified health lifestyle pathways using the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N≈6,550). Children's health lifestyle pathways were complex, combining healthier and unhealthier behaviors and changing with age. Social background prior to birth was associated with health lifestyle pathways, as were parents' resources, health behaviors, and non-health-focused parenting. Developing health lifestyle pathways were related to kindergarten cognition, behavior, and health net of social background and other parent influences. Thus, family context is important for the development of complex health lifestyle pathways across early childhood, which have implications for school preparedness and thus for social inequalities and well-being throughout life. Developing health lifestyles both reflect and reproduce social inequalities across generations.

School bullying, body size, and gender: an intersectionality approach to understanding US children’s bullying victimization

We examine separate and combined effects of children’s body size and gender on school bullying victimization in the United States. Second-grade data for the 2012/13 school year from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, 2011 were analyzed, hierarchical generalized logistic modeling was used, and three forms of school bullying were studied. Girls were less likely than boys to be verbally or physically bullied, and obese children were more likely to be verbally and relationally bullied than non-obese children. The protective effect of gender extends to obese girls when obesity is not a risk factor (physical bullying). When obesity is a risk factor, gender is not protective (verbal bullying) or is a risk factor (relational bullying) for girls. These findings suggest that an intersectional body size–gender lens is crucial to understanding how inequality is produced through school bullying. Future interventions should incorporate an intersectional understanding of school bullying.

Improvement in food environments may help prevent childhood obesity: Evidence from a 9-year cohort study.

SummaryBackgroundEffects of food environments (FEs) on childhood obesity are mixed.ObjectivesTo examine the association of residential FEs with childhood obesity and variation of the association across gender and urbanicity.MethodsWe used the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort data, with 9440 kindergarteners followed up from 1998 to 2007. The Dun and Bradstreet commercial datasets in 1998 and 2007 were used to construct 12 FE measures of children, ie, changes in the food outlet mix and density of supermarkets, convenience stores, full‐service restaurants, fast‐food restaurants, retail bakery, dairy‐product stores, health/dietetic food stores, confectionery stores, fruit/vegetable markets, meat/fish markets, and beverage stores. Two‐level mixed‐effect and cluster robust logistic regression models were fitted to examine associations.ResultsDecreased exposures to full‐service restaurants, retail bakeries, fruit/vegetable markets, and beverage stores were generally obesogenic, while decreased exposure to dairy‐product stores was generally obesoprotective; the magnitude and statistical significance of these associations varied by gender and urbanicity of residence. Higher obesity risk was associated with increased exposure to full‐service restaurants among girls, and with decreased exposures to fruit/vegetable markets in urban children, to beverage stores in suburban children, and to health/dietetic food stores in rural children. Mixed findings existed between genders on the associations of fruit/vegetable markets with child weight status.ConclusionIn the United States, exposure to different FEs seemed to lead to different childhood obesity risks during 1998 to 2007; the association varied across gender and urbanicity. This study has important implications for future urban design and community‐based interventions in fighting the obesity epidemic.

Race/ethnic inequalities in early adolescent development in the United Kingdom and United States.

Comparative literature investigating race/ethnic patterning of children's health has found racial/ethnic minority status to be linked to health disadvantages. Less is known about differences during early adolescence, a period during which health outcomes are linked to later life health. Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 10,188) and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten Cohort (n ~ 6,950), we examine differences in socioemotional and cognitive development among 11-year-old adolescents and the contribution of family resources in explaining any observed differences, including socioeconomic, cultural traditions, and psychosocial resources. Adverse socioemotional health and cognitive development were associated with race/ethnic minority status in both countries. In the United States, we found that cultural resources and family socioeconomic capital played a large role in attenuating differences in problem behaviors between Asian American, Black, and Latino adolescents and their White peers. In the United Kingdom, the explanatory factors explaining differences in problem behaviors varied by racial/ethnic group. In both contexts, family resources cannot explain the sizable cross-country differences in verbal skills. In the United Kingdom, Indian adolescents had nearly one-third of a standard deviation increase in their verbal scores whereas in the United States, Black and Latino adolescents had scores nearly two-fifths and one-fifth of a standard deviation below the mean, respectively. We use a detailed race/ethnic classification in the investigation of racial/ethnic inequalities across the United States and United Kingdom. There are strong family resource effects, suggesting that relative family advantages and disadvantages do have meaningful associations with adolescent socioemotional and cognitive development. Although levels of resources do explain some cross-national differences, there appears to be a broader range of family background variables in the United Kingdom that influence adolescent development. Our findings point to the critical role of both the extent and nature of family social capital in affecting adolescent development.

Relating early childhood teachers’ working conditions and well-being to their turnover intentions

High turnover rates of early care and education teachers reduce the quality of education; unsatisfied teachers, suffering from stress or emotional exhaustion, are less equipped to promote children’s development and more likely to leave the classroom. We used data from a national survey of US early childhood educators (n = 1129) to examine associations between teachers’ working conditions, well-being, and motivation with professional commitment and turnover intentions to move, leave, or remain. Multiple regression analyses revealed that more intrinsically motivated teachers were more likely to report intentions to move over leave, emotionally exhausted teachers were more likely to report intentions to leave, and lower teacher-reported working conditions predicted intentions to move or leave the field over staying. The results suggest that teachers’ well-being and perceived working conditions relate with their intentions to remain at their job or within the field and to their commitment to the profession.

Disparities in kindergarteners’ executive functions at kindergarten entry: Relations with parenting and child care

A growing body of research has begun to examine disparities in children’s early executive functions (EF), but few studies have examined disparities in EF based on parent education and whether parental beliefs regarding education and types of parental investments in early learning help explain them. The purpose of this study was to examine disparities in EF based on parental education at kindergarten entry and test whether parental beliefs and investments help explain these gaps. Using nationally representative data from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten 2011) (n = 12,650), we found pronounced disparities in children’s EF at kindergarten entry, particularly for working memory. We also found that parent beliefs and investments were differentially associated with EF and that parental investments – frequent parent and child reading, a large number of books in the home, and enrollment in private center-based care – helped account for gaps in working memory.

A survey of US early childhood caries programs: findings and recommendations.

To identify and characterize US early childhood caries (ECC) programs. A 39 question online survey was fielded to 245 ECC programs identified from the literature and peer programs. The 101 respondents (41 percent response rate) reported their program's geographic reach, type, areas of focus, target populations, approaches, affiliations, providers, goals, costs, and funding. Half of the programs affiliate with formal early childhood social service or nutrition programs. Almost all characterize their work as risk reduction, disease suppression, or arrest. In descending order, programs describe their approaches as educating parents, addressing family-level health behaviors, utilizing pharmacological approaches with fluoride varnish or silver nitrate, delivering education to health professionals, and conducting research. A majority of programs target urban, poor, and low-income populations. Although little more than a third of programs utilize a logic model, most collect evaluation data and believe their program to be "very" or "somewhat" replicable. Programs tend to depend on multiple funding sources and be largely reliant on grants with foundations as the leading source of support followed by federal grants, state/local grants, and governmental programs such as Head Start. Programs demonstrate attempts at ECC prevention and management through holistic approaches predicated on behavioral theory, cariology science, and public health principles. Partnerships created by these programs provide unique opportunities to promote oral health. Various strategies could potentially leverage systemic changes in the delivery of dental care for young children.

Contextualizing child-centeredness: Lessons from an American Samoan Head Start

Child-centeredness is a pedagogical approach common in US early childhood education, one that advocates young children should direct their own learning and excercise individual choice in activitites. This approach is reflected in national US Head Start policy. Using multivocal, video-cued, and traditional ethnographic methods, this study presents an analysis of interview data collected from three focus groups with American Samoan teachers to argue that the child-centered approach in newly adopted performance standards may not actually be child-centered, particuarly when ignoring the knowledge base and cultural expectations for children in culturally diverse communities. Analyzed through post-colonial theory, which recognizes the erasure of indigenous approaches to educating young children, we focus on Samoan teachers’ understanding of child-centeredness. Results indicate Samoan teachers had drastically different understandings of child-centeredness, instead pointing to optimal pedagogy as collaborative, community-oriented, and structured, and stressing the value of learning from each other. In forgrounding the voice of Samoan educators, we complicate the existing and pervasive binary positioning of child-centered and teacher-directed instruction in early childhood curriculums, to offer another alternative, an expanded notion of child-centeredness that is contextually bound and locally determined.

Socioemotional wellbeing of mixed race/ethnicity children in the UK and US: Patterns and mechanisms

Existing literature suggests that mixed race/ethnicity children are more likely to experience poor socioemotional wellbeing in both the US and the UK, although the evidence is stronger in the US. It is suggested that this inequality may be a consequence of struggles with identity formation, more limited connections with racial/ethnic/cultural heritage, and increased risk of exposure to racism.Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 13,734) and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n ~ 6250), we examine differences in the socioemotional wellbeing of mixed and non-mixed 5/6 year old children in the UK and US and explore heterogeneity in outcomes across different mixed groups in both locations. We estimate a series of linear regressions to examine the contribution of factors that may explain any observed differences, including socio-economic and cultural factors, and examine the extent to which these processes vary across the two nations.We find no evidence of greater risk for poor socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in both national contexts. We find that mixed race/ethnicity children experience socio-economic advantage compared to their non-mixed minority counterparts and that socio-economic advantage is protective for socioemotional wellbeing. Cultural factors do not contribute to differences in socioemotional wellbeing across mixed and non-mixed groups.Our evidence suggests then that at age 5/6 there is no evidence of poorer socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in either the UK or the US. The contrast between our findings and some previous literature, which reports that mixed race/ethnicity children have poorer socioemotional wellbeing, may reflect changes in the meaning of mixed identities across periods and/or the developmental stage of the children we studied.

Neighbourhood Ethnic Density Effects on Behavioural and Cognitive Problems Among Young Racial/Ethnic Minority Children in the US and England: A Cross-National Comparison

Studies on adult racial/ethnic minority populations show that the increased concentration of racial/ethnic minorities in a neighbourhood—a so-called ethnic density effect—is associated with improved health of racial/ethnic minority residents when adjusting for area deprivation. However, this literature has focused mainly on adult populations, individual racial/ethnic groups, and single countries, with no studies focusing on children of different racial/ethnic groups or comparing across nations. This study aims to compare neighbourhood ethnic density effects on young children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes in the US and in England. We used data from two nationally representative birth cohort studies, the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort and the UK Millennium Cohort Study, to estimate the association between own ethnic density and behavioural and cognitive development at 5 years of age. Findings show substantial heterogeneity in ethnic density effects on child outcomes within and between the two countries, suggesting that ethnic density effects may reflect the wider social and economic context. We argue that researchers should take area deprivation into account when estimating ethnic density effects and when developing policy initiatives targeted at strengthening and improving the health and development of racial and ethnic minority children.