Classroom quality in infant and toddler classrooms: impact of age and programme type

King, Elizabeth; Pierro, Rebekah Chace; Li, Jiayao; Porterfield, Mary Lee; Rucker, Lia

doi:10.1080/03004430.2015.1134521

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A significant indirect path between educator qualifications and 'near and clear' talk indicated that in rooms where there was a degree-qualified teacher, higher Interaction Quality explained the difference in infants' experience with 'near and clear' educator talk. While in line with previous research affirming the importance of early childhood degree qualified educators for infant program quality (Hestenes et al 2007;King et al 2016), the precise reason for the indirect relationship cannot be ascertained from these data. The degreequalified teacher was only one educator in the room, and both the Interaction Quality and the AWC measure captures interactions and talk from all present educators.…”

Section: Associations Between 'Near and Clear' Talk And Quality Indicmentioning

confidence: 50%

“…Educator qualifications. Infant rooms with university-qualified teachers have been found to exhibit higher overall quality levels (Burchinal et al 2002;Hestenes et al 2007) and higher language and interaction environment quality than those led by lower qualified educators (King et al 2016). On this basis, we indexed qualification according to whether the infant room employed a university qualified early childhood teacher, which, in the Australian context, requires a specialized degree in early childhood education.…”

Section: Structural Quality Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Infants’ experience with ‘near and clear’ educator talk: individual variation and its relationship to indicators of quality

Degotardi

Han

Torr

2018

International Journal of Early Years Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study investigated the quantity of audible and intelligible ('near and clear') educator talk directly experienced by under-two-year-old infants attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs and examined whether the quantity of educator talk was related to characteristics of quality in their ECEC room. Participants were 57 infants attending separate infant rooms in and around the Sydney metropolitan area, Australia. Each infant was observed for 3 hours, wearing a small, customdesigned digital language processor (DLP) which digitally recorded and generated measures of 'near and clear' adult talk, unclear talk and infant vocalisations. Structural quality indicators include educator qualification, group size and educator-infant ratios, and Interaction Quality was assessed using the ITERS-R Interaction and Listening and Talking subscales. Infants' experience with 'near and clear' talk was predicted by Interaction Quality, the presence of a degree-qualified teacher and group size. 'Near and clear' talk was also significantly and positively related to the quantity of infant vocalisation and, negatively, to their level of exposure to unclear talk. Findings are discussed in terms of conceptualisations of quality in infant ECEC rooms, as well as the potentials and limitations of the 'near and clear' talk measure for use in future studies of language development in this context.

show abstract

Section: Associations Between 'Near and Clear' Talk And Quality Indicmentioning

confidence: 50%

Section: Structural Quality Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants’ experience with ‘near and clear’ educator talk: individual variation and its relationship to indicators of quality

Degotardi

Han

Torr

2018

International Journal of Early Years Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A recent review of studies that investigated the use of Quality Monitoring and Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS) in the United States showed that overall there appear to be associations between higher QRIS ratings and alternative measures of quality that were usually based on the ERS scales and sometimes the CLASS (Karoly et al, 2016 [51] ). Some correlations were reported for all eight studies, but the magnitude of the associations appeared weak.…”

Section: Accountability or Quality Rating And Improvement Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural characteristics and process quality in early childhood education and care

2018

OECD Education Working Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, this is not typically the case. Past research has documented that teacher-child interactions and instructional support are typically lower quality in infant-toddler compared to preschool classrooms ( La Paro et al, 2014 ; King et al, 2016 ). Infant-toddler teachers typically have lower levels of formal education than preschool, PreK, and K-12 teachers ( Madill et al, 2016 ) with the infant-toddler workforce having some college but no degree (36%), or a high school diploma (28%) with fewer having an AA (17%) or bachelor’s degree or higher (19%) ( NSECE, 2013 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience: supporting children’s self-regulation in infant and toddler classrooms

Horm,

Jeon,

Ruvalcaba

et al. 2024

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionResilience is a process that develops as a complex transaction as children experience and shape their social-ecological contexts. The dynamic development of self-regulation is an aspect of resilience that has received increased attention as a key mechanism predicting a variety of important short- and long-term outcomes. The current study examined how the self-regulation skills of infants and toddlers in a classroom could potentially shape classroom interactions and quality which, in turn, could potentially shape the development of self-regulation skills of the individual infants and toddlers enrolled in the classroom across an early childhood program year. The unique contribution of this study is the focus on a critical component of resilience, self-regulation, in an understudied age group, infants and toddlers, in an important and understudied context, the infant-toddler early childhood classroom.MethodsData are from a statewide evaluation of early childhood programs serving children birth to age 3 growing up in low-income contexts. Multi-level mediation models were employed to examine the mediation effect of classroom quality between classroom-level self-regulation and individual children’s gain in self-regulation over a year.ResultsWe found a significant indirect path. The results showed that classroom-level self-regulation skills demonstrated by infants and toddlers in the fall predicted higher levels of teachers’ implementation of three important aspects of classroom quality – support for social-emotional, cognitive, and language development – in the winter. We also found that higher levels of teachers’ support for social-emotional, cognitive, and language development associated with children’s increased growth in self-regulation skills from fall to spring. The direct path from classroom-level self-regulation demonstrated in the fall to individual children’s gain in self-regulation was not significant.DiscussionThese findings, unique due to the focus on infants and toddlers in a classroom context, are discussed within the larger body of existing self-regulation research conducted with older children and prevalent theories outlining developmental mechanisms. Implications for both infant-toddler classroom practices and future research are addressed. Relative to practice, our findings have implications for informing how the development of self-regulation, an important component of resilience, can be supported in the youngest children, infants and toddlers, specifically those enrolled in center-based classrooms serving young children growing up in families with low incomes. We focus on the need to improve the support and professional development of infant-toddler teachers which, in turn, can improve classroom quality and foster resilience in infants and toddlers. Relative to research, our use of a relatively new measure of infant-toddler classroom quality, the Quality of Care for Infants and Toddlers (QCIT), shows how this tool can expand infant-toddler research, a need in the current literature. Future research using different measures, designs, analytical strategies, and diverse samples and contexts is needed to further explain very young children’s development of self-regulation, a critical component of resilience.

show abstract

Classroom quality in infant and toddler classrooms: impact of age and programme type

Cited by 10 publications

References 36 publications

Infants’ experience with ‘near and clear’ educator talk: individual variation and its relationship to indicators of quality

Infants’ experience with ‘near and clear’ educator talk: individual variation and its relationship to indicators of quality

Structural characteristics and process quality in early childhood education and care

Resilience: supporting children’s self-regulation in infant and toddler classrooms

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About