Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Early Education Interventions on Cognitive and Social Development

Abstract

Background/Context There is much current interest in the impact of early childhood education programs on preschoolers and, in particular, on the magnitude of cognitive and affective gains. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Because this new segment of public education may require substantial resources, accurate descriptions are required of the potential benefits and costs of implementing specific preschool programs. To address this issue comprehensively, a meta-analysis was conducted for the purpose of synthesizing the outcomes of comparative studies in this area. Population/Participants/Subjects A total of 123 comparative studies of early childhood interventions were analyzed. Each study provided a number of contrasts, where a contrast is defined as the comparison of an intervention group of children with an alternative intervention or no intervention group. Intervention/Program/Practice A prevalent pedagogical approach in these studies was direct instruction, but inquiry-based pedagogical approaches also occurred in some interventions. No assumption was made that nominally similar interventions were equivalent. Research Design The meta-analytic database included both quasi-experimental and randomized studies. A coding strategy was developed to record information for computing study effects, study design, sample characteristics, and program characteristics. Findings/Results Consistent with the accrued research base on the effects of preschool education, significant effects were found in this study for children who attend a preschool program prior to entering kindergarten. Although the largest effect sizes were observed for cognitive outcomes, a preschool education was also found to impact children's social skills and school progress. Specific aspects of the treatments that positively correlated with gains included teacher-directed instruction and small-group instruction, but provision of additional services tended to be associated with negative gains. Conclusions/Recommendations Given the current state of research on the efficacy of early childhood interventions, there is both good and bad news. The good news is that a host of original and synthetic studies have found positive effects for a range of outcomes, and this pattern is clearest for outcomes relating to cognitive development. Moreover, many promising variables for program design have been identified and linked to outcomes, though little more can be said of the link than that it is positive. The bad news is that there is much less empirical information in the studies examined available for designing interventions at multiple levels with multiple components.

Head Start’s impact is contingent on alternative type of care in comparison group.

“…These estimated effects of Head Start on children's development, especially cognitive outcomes after 1-year participation in the HSIS, were smaller compared with those reported in earlier evaluations of model early interventions (e.g., Perry Preschool, Abecedarian, and the Infant Health and Development Program [IHDP]; with short-term effect sizes of 0.35-0.97 on cognitive outcomes) (Brooks-Gunn, 2011;Camilli et al, 2010;Karoly, Kilburn, & Cannon, 2005;Ludwig & Phillips, 2007). This difference may reflect the fact that the counterfactual has changed, given that few 3-and 4-year-old children in the 1960s to the 1980s attended any form of preschool if they did not have Head Start or other model early interventions evaluated in many prior studies while most of these age-groups of children today have some form of school-or center-based care (Waldfogel, 2006).…”

Response to instruction in preschool: Results of two randomized studies with children at significant risk of reading difficulties.

“…In contrast, it is not clear that this presumption is met in many preschool classrooms (Greenwood et al, 2011(Greenwood et al, , 2013. Although there is evidence that preschool can have positive effects on the readingrelated skills of young children (e.g., Campbell, Ramey, Pungello, Sparling, & Miller-Johnson, 2002;Gormley, Phillips, & Gayer, 2008;Wong, Cook, Barnett, & Jung, 2008), there is both limited evidence for the efficacy of most preschool curricula (Camilli, Vargas, Ryan, & Barnett, 2010;Lonigan & Cunningham, 2013) and limited evidence that most preschool settings are implementing the select number of efficacious Tier I curricula. Regarding the efficacy of curricula, the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse's (WWC) reported that of more than 60 commercially available literacy or comprehensive preschool curricula, only 13 had studies that met evidence standards for causal interpretation; of these, only five curricula had evidence of a positive impact on one or more literacy-related skill.…”

Preschoolers’ Attitudes, School Motivation, and Executive Functions in the Context of Various Types of Kindergarten

“…Encouraged by the supportive approach of the teachers, this attitude toward kindergarten is the basis for future attitudes toward education in general and thus, in a broader perspective, influences future motivation for school achievement ( Fuhs et al, 2013 ; Stephanou, 2014 ; Daviran, 2015 ). This effect is even more important for children from disadvantaged or unstimulating backgrounds, where kindergarten can play an important role in eliminating these deficits ( Currie, 2001 ; Duncan et al, 2007 ; Camilli et al, 2010 ).…”