Background: Access to quality early childhood development (ECD) is a fundamental right for all children. However, many children worldwide are deprived of quality early childhood outcomes because of the non-compliance of ECD programmes with the sector's quality standards and the regulatory landscape. Aim: This article, therefore, aimed to explore…

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and…

This review examines the extant Australian literature on process quality in ECEC, which is understood as children's actual experience within a childcare setting such as interactions between educators and children. A thematic analysis of empirical evidence from the 21 qualified articles reveals key characteristics of ECEC process quality studies,…

Early childhood education is regarded as key to help ensure long-term positive outcomes for children, and high-quality provision crucial for long-term developmental outcomes. However, how settings are inspected for the quality of their services varies substantially across countries. In England, the inspection body Ofsted has been heavily…

Research Findings: Outdoor environments have recently become part of the early childhood quality puzzle, which has long been important to trace relationships between children's experiences in child care and their development. However, fewer studies have analyzed the extent to which the quality of these outdoor spaces relates to young children's…

This research utilized bibliometric analysis to assess both historic and current research trajectories and forecast upcoming research domains in social-emotional learning (SEL). We gathered 1,790 papers from the Web of Science database. Both co-citation and co-word analyses were used to highlight key publications, clarify the foundational…

Diversity within a classroom has major effects on the child's development as they are growing. A question that occurs to educators is what are the impact of diverse experiences a child faces. Through the research there will be factors that help identify the benefits of diverse exposers. Educators can see the correlation of social economic status…

Substantial research has aimed to characterise and measure early childhood education and care (ECEC) quality. However, heterogeneity in measures, methods and contexts across studies has made it difficult to reconcile the inconsistent associations reported between quality dimensions and child outcomes. While there is broad consensus that early…

In 2023, the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) and researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland partnered to examine how specific aspects of quality relate to learning and development outcomes for children in Australia. This study contributes the first empirical evidence linking quality ratings of…

National-level monitoring of quality of early childhood education (ECE) is key to achieving inclusive and equitable education. Most countries report structural quality while process characteristics are rarely observed at the national level. This study examined the associations between ECE and children's development in a middle-income country using…

Research Findings: A growing number of stakeholders in early childhood education (ECE) rely on self-assessment to assess and improve the quality of ECE. In this systematic review, we investigated the reliability and validity of self-assessment in ECE, summarizing findings from 27 publications. We meta-analytically synthesized findings from 25…

Large-scale research such as the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) study (Sylva et al., 2004) confirms the significance of educator and teacher practices for improvement in learning outcomes for young children. The quality of instruction children receive in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings and programs can…

The majority of children from birth to age 5 in the United States regularly attend early care and education (ECE) programs. There are many types of ECE in the United States. Some are publicly funded, such as the federal Head Start and Early Head Start programs and state-funded pre-kindergarten. Others are privately funded community-based…

High-quality early childhood education is key for children's positive and long-term outcomes. Countries differ on how they quality assure provision. In England, Ofsted is the independent inspection body, often the source of controversy for lack of transparency in ratings. However, there is a dearth of evidence on how inspectors' judgements are…

Quality early childhood education (ECE) can improve children's learning and development in low- and middle-income countries, but little evidence exists of programs targeting marginalized girls in vulnerable rural communities. This study used a matched-pair mixed-methods community-randomized trial to evaluate a preschool program for marginalized…