Back to Basics: Developmental Catalysts of Quality Improvement in Early Education and Care

Children’s experiences in early education programs can have a profound influence on their cognitive, social, and emotional development. In these settings, interactions with educators serve as catalysts for children’s healthy development. Yet too few children today are in the types of high-quality early learning environments marked by warm, cognitively stimulating exchanges. This review summarizes research on the features of settings that promote growth in children’s skills across a range of developmental domains, then describes research documenting these features across today’s early education and care landscape. Turning to strategies for cultivating these features across the diverse early education and care system, the discussion focuses on the central role of the educator. The conclusion draws implications for ongoing public preK expansion and quality improvement efforts, as well as highlights opportunities for future research to further these efforts.

Linking Features of Structural and Process Quality Across the Landscape of Early Education and Care

Commonly regulated structural quality features, like educator education levels and group size, are thought to be foundational to the quality of children’s everyday experiences in early education and care settings. Yet little is known about how these features relate to the day-to-day interactions and activities that occur in these settings—or process quality features—across the landscape of early education and care. In this study, we examine the association between structural quality features and process quality features in a diverse sample of classrooms (n = 672) participating in a statewide study of early education and care. Using a permutation test approach, we found that group size and child-to-adult ratio were most consistently linked to children’s experiences but educator education, experience, and curriculum usage were largely unrelated. Implications of these findings for quality improvement initiatives are discussed.

Politics of care in the early years in Australia since the pandemic

Almost every part of human society have been impacted by COVID-19 and it has exposed our world’s economic and social fault lines. How each country cared for their youngest members rapidly became obvious as one of those fault lines. Many countries had inadequate early education and care systems that quickly started to buckle under the impact of lockdowns. What happened in Australia, although unique in the exact way it played out, was essentially replicated around the world. Education and care of our youngest citizens was realised to be essential, market based care systems began to crumble, the government poured more subsidies into the system, and educators and teachers watched as their roles were reduced in the public’s eye to childminders. Educators and teachers had to take on more work as they sought to engage with children at home, and sought to keep themselves safe. Eventually the government granted everybody that needed it, free ‘childcare’, a move that would see economists, feminists and families call for it to remain free once the country re-opened. The main opposition party has now joined that call and we may see a legacy of a re-imagined education and care system in Australia in the wake of the pandemic.