We assessed impacts on classroom quality and on 5 child language and behavioral outcomes of a 2-year teacher professional-development program for publicly funded prekindergarten and kindergarten in Chile. This cluster-randomized trial included 64 schools (child N = 1,876). The program incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching. We found moderate to large positive impacts on observed emotional and instructional support as well as classroom organization in prekindergarten classrooms after 1 year of the program. After 2 years of the program, moderate positive impacts were observed on emotional support and classroom organization. No significant program impacts on child outcomes were detected at posttest (1 marginal effect, an increase in a composite of self-regulation and low problem behaviors, was observed). Professional development for preschool teachers in Chile can improve classroom quality. More intensive curricular approaches are needed for these improvements to translate into effects on children.

Quality of teacher-child interactions is central to prekindergarten children's learning. In the United States, the quality of teacher-child interactions is commonly assessed using the teaching through interactions conceptual framework and an associ/ated observational tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). This study examined: (a) whether there was evidence supporting three distinctive domains of teacher-child interactions in Chile (construct validity) and (b) whether these domains predicted end-of-prekindergarten language, academic, and executive function skills in Chile (predictive validity). The sample consisted of 91 Chilean prekindergarten classrooms (1,868 four-year-old children). The findings support both construct and predictive validity of the teaching through interactions conceptual framework as assessed by the CLASS in Chile. Implications for cross-country comparison of quality of teacher-child interactions in prekindergarten classrooms are discussed.

Despite consensus in the developmental literature regarding the role of executive function (EF) skills in supporting the development of language skills during the preschool years, we know relatively little about the associations between EF skills, including all EF components, and vocabulary skills among preschool-aged children. In this paper, we address this gap by fitting structural equation models to examine the associations between beginningof-preschool EF and end-of-preschool receptive vocabulary, as well as the association between beginning-of-preschool receptive vocabulary and end-of-preschool EF skills, to data from 400 preschool-aged children. We find that EF skills at the beginning of preschool are a significant predictor of receptive vocabulary skills at the end of preschool, controlling for receptive vocabulary at the beginning of preschool. However, receptive vocabulary skills at the beginning of preschool do not predict EF skills at the end of preschool, controlling for EF at the beginning of preschool. Our findings are suggestive of the important role EF plays in supporting growth in receptive vocabulary skills, above and beyond earlier vocabulary levels, and of the direction of the developmental pathway between EF and receptive vocabulary in the preschool years. The discussion highlights the need for further research in

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