The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies

Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Eric Dearing, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Eric Dearing

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781119121770
  9781118937297
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118937327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicoterapia

The first and only comprehensive review of current early childhood development theory, practices, policies, and the science behind them

This unique and important bookprovides a comprehensive overview of the current theory, practices, and policies in early childhood development withinthe contexts of family, school, and community, and society at large. Moreover, it synthesizes scientifically rigorous research from an array of disciplines in an effort to identify the most effective strategies for promoting early childhood development.

Research into childhood development is booming, and the scientific knowledge base concerning early childhood development is now greater than that of any other stage of the human life span. At the same time, efforts to apply that knowledge to early childhood practices, programs, and policies have never been greater or more urgent. Yet, surprisingly, until The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies, there was no comprehensive, critical review of the applied science in the field.

The book begins with in-depth coverage of child and family approaches. From there it moves onto a consideration of school- and community-based strategies. It concludes with a discussion of current social policies on health and development in early childhood and their implications. 

• Provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the knowledge base, along with guidance for the future of the field
• Examines the underlying theory and basic science guiding efforts to promote early childhood development
• Critically reviews the strength of the empirical support for individual practices, programs, and policies
• Explores key opportunities and barriers policymakers and practitioners face when implementing various approaches
• Pays particular attention to socioeconomically disadvantaged and other disenfranchised populations

The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies is a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students across the social sciences who are interested in strengthening their understanding of current strategies for promoting early childhood development and the science informing those strategies.

PART I
The State of Young Children in the United States

CHAPTER ONE
The State of Young Children in the United States: School Readiness

Terri J. Sabol and Robert C. Pianta

School readiness refers to the set of foundational skills, behaviors, and knowledge children display as they enter school that enable them to achieve academic success in elementary school, graduate from high school, and eventually thrive in the workforce and beyond (La Paro & Pianta, 2000; Pianta, Cox, & Snow, 2007; Zaslow, Tout, Halle, Whittaker, & Lavelle, 2010). Children prepared to adapt to the school environment when they enter kindergarten are more likely to meet academic and social demands of the classroom and succeed in school. Although there is no clear consensus on the exact definition of school readiness, it is generally agreed to include a combination of cognitive, language, executive functioning, socioemotional, behavioral, and health characteristics that cooperate to promote children’s functioning in a school setting (Boivin & Bierman, 2013; Sabol & Pianta, 2012).

In the United States, kindergarten teachers report that children on average are not fully prepared to meet the demands of the classroom environment, particularly in terms of academic skills. In 2010–2011, teachers reported that only 27% of children were proficient in reading and math at school entry based on a nationally representative sample of newly entering kindergarteners (Bernstein, West, Newsham, & Reid, 2014). Moreover, the United States has large disparities in school readiness based on children’s family backgrounds. Children from low-income backgrounds are almost a year behind at school entry in terms of their academic and language skills compared to children from higher income families (Denton Flanagan & McPhee, 2009; Halle et al., 2009).

To promote children’s school readiness, there is a large and growing movement to invest in high quality education and care of young children before they enter school. The largest share of this investment is spent on early childhood education for 3- and 4-year-old children, which includes the federally funded Head Start program as well as state-funded preschool programs. In particular, there is increasing momentum to expand access to high quality early childhood education programs (Barnett, Votruba-Drzal, Dearing, & Carolan, in this volume). At the federal level, over $6 billion dollars is spent annually for Head Start and states spend approximately $5 billion annually on public pre-kindergarten programs. This collective investment represents an increase of almost $4 billion in early education programs compared to a decade ago (Barnett, Carolan, Squires, & Clarke Brown, 2013; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2014).

The substantial investment in young children will only lead to lasting change if the early childhood interventions target the skills that matter most for children’s short- and long-term development (Pianta, Barnett, Burchinal, & Thornburg, 2009). This is predicated on the assumption that the field has a clear definition (and accompanying assessments) of school readiness that serves two critical functions: (a) it consistently predicts children’s performance over time; and (b) it accurately highlights children’s performance as well as inequalities in children’s outcomes. Without a definition and assessment that addresses these two key aims, any early childhood education intervention may only target a portion of the skills that are important for later school success.

The broad aim of this chapter is to describe: (1) school readiness in the United States in the 21st century; (2) the current framework for assessing school readiness and how this may be strengthened; (3) gaps in school readiness based on this framework; and (4) the importance of aligning early childhood interventions and policies to more comprehensive definitions of school readiness. We pay particular attention to ways in which our measurement of and policies targeting school readiness can work together to improve the life chances of children.

School Readiness in the United States in the 21st Century

Definition of school readiness

Researchers, educators, and policymakers generally agree that school readiness is a multidimensional concept that includes cognitive, executive functioning, language, socioemotional, behavioral, and health characteristics that contribute to children’s ability to adapt and thrive in school settings (Boivin & Bierman, 2013). These performance domains are correlated but typically are assessed and studied as independent indicators of school readiness and predictors of later achievement. Importantly, the guiding definitions of school readiness typically include skills and behaviors that are related to learning processes as well as learning outcomes, as opposed to the K–12 system, which often only emphasizes student outcomes based on children’s performance on academic achievement tests.

In the area of cognition, school readiness includes both acquired knowledge or skills in particular content area (such as knowing a certain number of letters) as well as learning/processing skills or how fast children acquire knowledge. In particular, there has been a growing emphasis on executive functioning skills and how these skills interact with other domains to promote learning in preschool classrooms. Executive functioning typically is defined as the set of skills and behaviors required to attain a goal, including working memory, attention control, attention shifting, and response inhibition. For young children, this means being able to resist distractions (e.g., pay attention to a teacher rather than talk with peers), inhibit dominant responses in emotional contexts (e.g., raise hand instead of talking while the teacher is reading a book), and prioritize and sequence information and hold onto it in memory (e.g., plan and carry out the series of steps required to line up for lunch; Diamond, 2006; Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).

In addition, school readiness includes children’s language skills, including their receptive language (i.e., the ability to listen and understand language) and expressive language (i.e., the ability to communicate with others using verbal language). Children’s socioemotional skills are also an important component of school readiness and include behaviors such as cooperation with teachers and peers and developing social relationships, as well behavior problems, including aggression or poor regulation. There are also a set of skills referred to as approaches to learning, which reflect children’s curiosity, flexibility, attention, persistence, and engagement. The physical health domain includes motor development, such as development of fine and gross motor skills, and healthy behavior practices. Collectively, all of these skills are theorized to affect children’s learning opportunities and their acquisition of new skills and behaviors in the classroom setting (Diamond, 2006; Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).

Most early childhood education policies recognize the importance of children’s skills across these multiple domains. The Race-to-the-Top Early Learning Challenge, a grant competition that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and designed to close the achievement gap, delineated the key components of school readiness that generally align to the field’s multidimensional, comprehensive definition. These “essential domains of school readiness,” based strongly on the framework from the National Education Goals Panel, include language and literacy development, cognition, general knowledge (e.g., early mathematics and early scientific development), and physical well-being, as well as children’s approaches to learning and executive functioning skills, and socioemotional development (Kagan, Moore, & Bradekamp, 1995; US Department of Education, 2014).

Children’s readiness for school in the United States

In the United States, children vary in terms of their readiness for school entry across domains. Results from a nationally representative study of over 8,000 newly entering kindergarten children from most recent cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) indicate that only a quarter of children were deemed “proficient” or ready for school in reading and math based on teacher reports. Although this suggests that the majority of children were not ready for school from teachers’ perspectives, this percentage has increased over the past 10 years when compared to the same measures from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K: 1999; Bassok & Latham, 2014). In the ECLS-K: 2011, teachers did report that, compared to reading and math skills, children have higher levels of proficiency in terms of motivation, engagement, and soci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I: The State of Young Children in the United States
• PART II: Theoretical and Empirical Contexts of Applied Developmental Science of Early Childhood
• PART III: Early Childhood Education and Care
• PART IV: Parenting, Family, and Dual-generation Programs
• PART V: Public Policy and Young Children
• Index
• End User License Agreement