Despite calls to expand early childhood education (ECE) in the United States, questions remain regarding its medium- and long-term impacts on educational outcomes. We use meta-analysis of 22 high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental studies conducted between 1960 and 2016 to find that on average, participation in ECE leads to statistically significant reductions in special education placement (d = 0.33 SD, 8.1 percentage points) and grade retention (d = 0.26 SD, 8.3 percentage points) and increases in high school graduation rates (d = 0.24 SD, 11.4 percentage points). These results support ECE’s utility for reducing education-related expenditures and promoting child well-being.

Prior work has conceptualized children's executive function and self-regulation skills as relatively stable across short periods of time. Grounded in long-standing contextual theories of human development, this study introduces a new observational tool for measuring children's regulatory skills across different naturally occurring situations within early childhood classrooms. Using 460 observations of 91 children (M age = 5.54 years) in 16 socio-demographically diverse Prekindergarten and Kindergarten classrooms, we found that this tool-the Regulation-Related Skills Measure (RRSM)-reliably captured observed dimensions of young children's attention control and inhibitorycontrol, but failed to appropriately represent more "internal" regulatory processes (e.g., working memory). Associations between the RRSM and other measures of children's executive function and self-regulation (i.e., direct assessments, adult reports) were low to moderate (r = 0.03 to 0.44), suggesting these tools are likely to be complementary in that they provide overlapping but ultimately distinct information regarding children's regulatory performance. Finally, results suggested substantial withinchild variation in regulatory behaviors across different situations within the classroom, with the same children demonstrating consistently stronger attention control and inhibitory control during transitions than during either teacher-or student-directed activities. These findings underscore the situationally-dependent nature of children's self-regulatory performance, with implications for both theory and practice. Future research is needed to replicate these findings in more diverse, representative samples of children.

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Children's abilities to regulate their behaviors are critical for learning and development, yet researchers lack an objective, precise method for assessing children's behavioral regulation in their everyday environments such as their classrooms. This study tested a sensor‐based approach to assess preschool children's behavioral regulation objectively, precisely, and naturalistically. Children wore accelerometer devices as they engaged in center‐based play in their preschool classrooms for roughly 45 min (N = 50 children, 48% female, mean age = 4.5 years). Set to record data each second, these devices collected information about children's movement (N = 140,564 observations). From these data, the authors extracted concrete behaviors hypothesized to index behavioral regulation and compared them with teacher and observer ratings of the same. Initiating movement more frequently, staying seated in activities for shorter amounts of time, and spending a greater amount of time in motion were related to lower ratings of attention and inhibitory control by teachers and by observers of classroom group time, median r = .45, p < .01. These same objectively measured behaviors showed only weak associations with children's performance on assessments of cognitive regulation, median r = .11, p = .47. The findings indicate that ambulatory accelerometers can capture movement‐based indicators of children's behavioral regulation in the classroom setting and that performance on measures of cognitive regulation does not strongly predict children's behavior in the classroom. As an unobtrusive and objective measure, actigraphy may become an important tool for studying children's behavioral regulation in everyday contexts.

Health guidelines suggest that caregivers provide preschoolers with opportunities to be physically active for 3 h per day (roughly 15 min per waking hour), but because children are not continuously active, it is unclear what amount of time is needed to reach this goal. This naturalistic study enrolled 67 children (M = 4.5 years, 46% female) who wore accelerometers to measure their activity during indoor and outdoor free -play (N = 315,061 s). An hour of indoor play was insufficient for most children to reach 15 min of physical activity. When outside, most children reached 15 min of physical activity after slightly more than 30 min. Children engaged in outdoor activity sporadically (1.7 starts/stops per minute). Most physical activity occurred in bouts shorter than 20 s. Indoor free-play does not, on its own, provide sufficient opportunity for preschoolers to engage in physical activity consistent with health guidelines. As a result, outdoor play for at least 30 min at a time has a key role in meeting these guidelines.

This paper used a nationally representative sample of children from the United States to examine the extent to which physical activity and sports participation may promote growth in children's executive functions (EFs), attention, and social self-control over time. Using data from the ECLS-K:2011 (N = 18,174), findings indicated that regular physical activity predicted growth in EFs and attention from 3rd to 4th grade (βs = 0.03-0.05) but not from kindergarten to 1st grade. After controlling for the frequency of physical activity, participation in group sports predicted increases in EFs, attention, and social self-control during both periods (βs = 0.02-0.04). Though modest in size, the findings suggest that encouraging children to engage in more frequent and more team-based activity will benefit the development of their EFs and related skills, and especially so for children in middle childhood.

Self-regulation is crucial for children’s development and learning. Almost by convention, it is assumed that self-regulation is a relatively stable skill, and little is known about its dynamic nature and context dependency. Traditional measurement approaches such as single direct assessments and adult reports are not well suited to address questions around variations of self-regulation within individuals and influences from social-contextual factors. Measures relying on child observations are uniquely positioned to address these questions and to advance the field by shedding light on self-regulatory variability and incremental growth. In this paper, we review traditional measurement approaches (direct assessments and adult reports) and recently developed observational measures. We discuss which questions observational measures are best suited to address and why traditional measurement approaches fall short. Finally, we share lessons learned based on our experiences using child observations in educational settings and discuss how measurement approaches should be carefully aligned to the research questions.