Impact of In-Service Professional Development Programs for Early Childhood Teachers on Quality Ratings and Child Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

High pedagogical quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is related to developmental outcomes in young children. This review summarizes findings from (quasi)-experimental studies that evaluated in-service training effects for ECEC professionals on external quality ratings and child development. The aggregation of findings at teacher level (including 36 studies with 2,891 teachers) revealed a medium in-service training effect on process quality (effect size [ES] = 0.68, SE = 0.07, p < .001). Furthermore, a subset of nine studies (including 486 teachers and 4,504 children) that provided data on both quality ratings and child development were analyzed, and they showed a small effect at child level (ES = 0.14; SE = 0.02, p < .001) and a medium effect at the corresponding classroom level (ES = 0.45, SE = 0.11, p < .001). Variance in effect sizes at child level was significantly related to in-service effects on quality ratings (53% explained variance). The results show that quality improvement is a key mechanism to accelerate the development of young children.

Heidelberg interaction training for language promotion in early childhood settings (HIT)

“…3.6 | Meta-analytic evidence Egert (2015) examined the impact of various training programmes for pre-school teachers such as language or literacy on developmental outcomes in children. Forty-eight studies with 59 different methods were included, most of them from the United States (n 5 38).…”

The Effect of Professional Development on Multilingual Education in Early Childhood in Luxembourg

“…There are only a few empirical studies that demonstrate effects of PD on teacher outcomes, practices as well as child development (Egert et al, 2018;Werner, Linting, Vermeer, and van IJzendoorn, 2016). For instance, some researchers demonstrated positive outcomes of their PD on teacher beliefs (King, 2014;Ottley et al, 2015) and practices (Kratzmann et al, 2017;Sachse et al, 2016).…”

“…Several meta-analyses provide further evidence of the effects of PD in ECEC on teacher outcomes, practices and child development (see Egert et al (2018); Markussen-Brown, Juhl, Piasta, Bleses, Hojen, and Justice (2017) and Werner et al (2016) for details). While these studies generally indicate positive effects of PD, the effect size differs.…”

“…It is important to note that these analyses only take account of quantitative studies and have mostly been carried out in the United States. Thirty-eight of 48 studies discussed in Egert (2015) and 34 of 36 studies in Egert et al (2018) were based in the US. The other studies came mainly from Canada with only five from Europe (Egert, 2015).…”

“…Thirty-eight of 48 studies discussed in Egert (2015) and 34 of 36 studies in Egert et al (2018) were based in the US. The other studies came mainly from Canada with only five from Europe (Egert, 2015). Furthermore, Buschmann and Sachse (2018) report that studies on PD tend to focus on children with language delay and that those on multilingualism are rare.…”