Four-year olds’ understanding of repeating and growing patterns and its association with early numerical ability
In this study, we aimed to address two gaps in research on early mathematical patterning, namely the lack of attention (1) to growing patterns and (2) to the association between different aspects of patterning and numerical ability. Participants were 400 four-year olds from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. Children’s patterning and numerical ability were assessed by means of individual tasks. The patterning tasks assessed their performance on three patterning activities (i.e., extending, translating, and identifying the pattern’s structure) for two types of patterns (i.e., repeating and growing). The numeric...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - July 6, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Promoting high-leverage writing instruction through an early childhood classroom daily routine (WPI): A professional development model of early writing skills
This study presents an initial investigation of a professional development intervention model for promoting preschool teachers’ high-leverage writing instruction through a modification of the “Morning Meeting Time” (MMT) classroom routine. Using a quasi-experimental design, 14 teachers and 112 children were assigned to intervention and comparison conditions. Intervention group teachers received a four-hour workshop and one in-classroom coaching session focused on modifying existing MMT routine activities to implement interactive writing instruction. Results indicate that intervention group teachers achieved high inte...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - July 4, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Pattern understanding is a predictor of early reading and arithmetic skills
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Kelly Burgoyne, Stephanie Malone, Arne Lervag, Charles HulmeAbstractThere is increasing interest in the role that pattern understanding may play in the development of arithmetic and reading skills. However, longitudinal studies are rare and typically do not control for other predictors which contribute to development in these domains. This large-scale longitudinal study examined the extent to which pattern understanding is a unique predictor of reading and arithmetic, after controlling for a range of theoretically important sk...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 28, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Directors’ reports about program-wide pedagogical approaches: Using institutional theory in a mixed methods study of Chicago-area centers serving 3- and 4-year old children
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Rachel A. Gordon, Laura Stout Sosinsky, Anna ColanerAbstractUsing institutional theory as a framework, we examined how professional norms and regulatory standards were associated with the instructional styles and curricular approaches that directors reported were used building-wide in centers serving 3- and 4-year-old children. We conducted a census surveying 229 child care center directors located in 31 ZIP Codes on the west and north sides of Chicago. We also completed in-depth interviews with a subsample of 29 directors. Mo...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 28, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Classroom quality and children’s social skills and problem behaviors: Dosage and disability status as moderators
In this study, we examined the association between classroom quality and children’s social skills and problem behaviors, as reported by ECE teachers, as well as the moderating effects of ECE dosage and children’s disability status. Participants were 222 children (Mage = 63.75, SD = 7.77), including 180 typically developing (90 boys) and 42 children with disabilities (29 boys), from 44 inclusive classrooms in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, Portugal. Our results indicated that children’s social skills and behavior problems were not directly associated with observed classroom quality domains. However, lower cl...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 28, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
What is the role of executive function in the school readiness of Latino students?
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Christa Mulker GreenfaderAbstractThe number of Latino students in the U.S. is growing, and more attention is being given to this population of learners. The current paper focuses on the school readiness of Latino children, many of whom come from homes where English is not the primary language — referred to as language minority (LM). Specific attention is given to the roles that English oral language skills and executive function (EF) – working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control – play in relation to ac...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 28, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Teachers’ use of questions during shared book reading: Relations to child responses
This study examined the extent to which preschool teachers used different types of questions during classroom-based shared book reading. Our goals were to describe the question wording teachers use to elicit child responses and to consider sequential relations between types of question wording and student responses. Participants included 96 preschool and kindergarten teachers who read aloud a standard narrative text to their whole class of students. All the sessions were video-recorded, transcribed and then coded by trained coders. During reading, teacher total extra-textual utterances included 23.74% questions (n = 52...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 25, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Speech difficulties at school entry are a significant risk factor for later reading difficulties
This study examined the relationship between speech difficulties at school entry and problems learning to read. We test the hypothesis that phonological skills explain the relationship between speech and reading difficulties. Speech skills were assessed in a large (N = 569) unselected sample of 5-year old children just after school entry. Children also completed a wide range of tasks measuring oral language (expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar and listening comprehension), reading and reading-related skills (single word reading, letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming) and non-verbal IQ...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 22, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Relating preschool class size to classroom quality and student achievement
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Jessica Francis, William Steven BarnettAbstractThis paper examines the effects of preschool class size on classroom quality and student achievement by drawing upon data from 21 teachers and 354 children that were collected during the 2008–2009 school year. Regular class sizes contained 20 students and reduced class sizes contained 15 students. Either the AM or PM session was randomly assigned to be 15 students for each teacher, so that each teacher taught both a regular and reduced class size.Children who attended reduced si...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 22, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: 3rd Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 48Author(s): (Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly)
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 20, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Children’s internalizing problems and teacher–child relationship quality across preschool
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Brenna R.L. Zatto, Wendy L.G. HoglundAbstractChildren experiencing internalizing problems (depression, anxiety, somatization) can have difficulty transitioning to preschool. Some research has shown that children who experience increased internalizing problems form negative relationships with their teachers. Other research has found that children who share more positive relationships with their teachers show fewer internalizing problems over time. The current study tests three conceptual models of the directional associations b...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 20, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Night-to-night variability in the bedtime routine predicts sleep in toddlers
Publication date: 4th Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 49Author(s): Amanda Prokasky, Matthew Fritz, Victoria J. Molfese, John E. BatesAbstractThe present study examined relations between nightly bedtime routines and sleep outcome measures in a sample of 185 toddlers aged 30 months. Parents reported on their toddler’s sleep duration and the length and activities included in the bedtime routine each night for approximately 2 weeks. Toddlers wore actigraphs to track their sleep during the same time period. Correlation, mean difference, and regression analyses indicated that toddlers experienced...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - June 14, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Cross-cultural exploration of growth in expressive communication of english-speaking infants and toddlers
Publication date: 3rd Quarter 2019Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Volume 48Author(s): Jay Buzhardt, Charles R. Greenwood, Naomi J. Hackworth, Fan Jia, Shannon K. Bennetts, Dale Walker, Jan M. MatthewsAbstractIncreasingly, measurement of child outcomes is becoming an international priority. However, the psychometric properties of standardized measures are rarely explored for populations beyond the country in which the measures were developed. The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure of infant-toddler expressive communication developed in the U.S. and designed for use by service providers to inform in...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - May 30, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Associations between parenting behavior and executive function among preschool-aged children born very preterm
The objective of the current study was to determine whether three domains of observed parenting behavior were associated with executive function in preschool-aged children born very preterm (<30 completed weeks’ gestation). Executive function of 41 preschool-aged (3.5–4.5 years) children was assessed using a standardized protocol (gift delay) and by parent-report (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool, BRIEF-P). Observational protocols were used to determine parental sensitivity, harsh intrusiveness, and dyadic mutuality in a semi-structured play task. Parental sensitivity and mutuality were rat...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - May 24, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Neighbourhood culture and immigrant children’s developmental outcomes at kindergarten
This study examined the relationship between immigrant children’s cultural background, the socio-economic and cultural composition of children’s neighborhoods, and children’s developmental outcomes at kindergarten. A hypothesis of concentrated socio-cultural capital as a buffering resource for immigrant children growing up with socioeconomic disadvantage was tested against one that proposed the two factors would conjointly put children’s development in double jeopardy. The study drew from a representative population-level database for the ethno-culturally diverse Lower Mainland in British Columbia (BC), Canada, and...
Source: Early Childhood Research Quarterly - May 24, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
