Substantial research indicates that high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) confers a wide range of benefits for children, yet quality in ECEC remains inconsistent. Given the ...variability in training and qualifications, one strategy for improving ECEC quality is in-service professional development (PD).
The current study evaluated an evidence-based in-service PD programme, Leadership for Learning, via a cluster randomised controlled trial involving 83 ECEC services and 1,346 children in their final year of pre-school.
Results indicated significant improvements in teaching quality across treatment centres and child development outcomes in language, numeracy and social-emotional development.
This study provides strong support for making evidence-informed PD routinely available for ECEC practitioners.
Linking classroom quality to separate domains of child development might neglect the transactional interactions across developmental domains. This research utilized latent profiles across academic ...and social–emotional development to explore which aspects of classroom quality can predict children's profiles at the classroom level. Data were drawn from 96 preschool classrooms and 547 children (3–5 years old) in China in 2020. Multilevel latent profile analysis identified three profiles (entitled low‐, average‐ and high‐level development at the individual level), and two classes (entitled average and below‐, average and above) at the classroom level. Multinominal logistic regression analyses revealed that instructional quality in math, science, and diversity, and the interactional quality in supporting children's learning and critical thinking, predicted children's profiles.
Widespread concerns about the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC), and the desire for better child outcomes, have led to a focus on improving teachers’ professional development (PD) ...as a cost-effective means of improving ECEC quality. However, most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of PD programs have taken place in areas with advanced educational systems. This study aims to fill this research gap by adapting (both educationally and culturally) an evidence-based PD program entitled “Leadership for Learning” in the Chinese context where there is a paucity of effective PD programs. Ninety-five classrooms, 202 teachers, and 547 children (3–5 years old) from 24 kindergartens (12 control, 12 intervention) participated in this RCT program which was designed to improve teachers’ teaching quality and child development. The results of the multilevel modeling indicated that the intervention was positively predictive of classroom quality and child developmental outcomes in literacy and executive function skills. As one of the first studies exploring PD effectiveness in China, this study has several meaningful implications for PD intervention as well as cross-cultural research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
This study investigated the pedagogical interactions between teachers and young children in six sampled Chinese kindergarten classrooms. Altogether 4320 turns of dialogue were coded from 27 ...videotaped pedagogical activities, and the 12 class teachers were surveyed and interviewed. The results revealed a unique Chinese pedagogical interaction that is a fusion of participatory and transmissive pedagogies: teachers directed the interactions with open-ended questions and whole-class dialogues, whereas children responded with short answers based on the learning content. This was reported by the teachers to be associated with the joint influence of related child, teacher, and cultural factors.
•Teacher-initiated dialogues and open-ended questions dominated pedagogical interactions in Chinese kindergarten classrooms.•Children were guided to clarify or elaborate on teachers' ideas.•Related child, teacher and cultural factors jointly influenced the pedagogical interaction.•The gap between the form and function of pedagogical interactions was found.
Research Findings: Self-regulation is an important determinant of children's developmental outcomes, but little research has explored its different facets simultaneously. This study aims to explore a ...sample of Chinese children's behavioral, cognitive and emotional self-regulation characteristics by examining their gender and age differences, associations with academic outcomes and the moderating effects of age and gender on these associations. Results show that girls outperformed boys in behavioral and emotional self-regulation and K2 children failed to show any advantages on behavioral and emotional self-regulation compared with K1 children. All facets of self-regulation associated with children's numeracy and literacy scores, while emotional self-regulation's contribution was negative; neither age nor gender moderated these associations. Practice & Policy: The study considers Chinese children's characteristics of self-regulation in terms of gender and age differences in the context of the broader literature. This study supports the contention that self-regulation may consist of different facets. Findings from this study also show the significance of self-regulation in preschoolers' academic outcomes and the complex nature of these facets when they function on academic achievement.
Collective academic supervision (CAS) is a collective model for students' academic supervision to reduce their isolation and as a measure to establish a congenial culture and to develop networks with ...their peers. Most studies focus on the benefits of online CAS, leaving the pedagogical process and students' learning experiences understudied. This research examines the participation and learning experience of a cohort of Master of Education (MEd) students in online supervision that took place on a Moodle platform. This article reports a case study of Moodle‐based CAS in Hong Kong that aims to train postgraduate students into teacher‐researchers. A class of MEd students and their supervisors were observed, and their online dialogues were analysed. The bio‐ecological student engagement model was used to explain the online supervision process. The results indicated that the students' learning was situated and embodied in the online social processes facilitated by peers' and supervisors' replies. The online interaction behaviours mainly included proposing questions or problems, providing information or solutions, and making comments. The findings have provided an exemplary case regarding the application of the online learning environment in supporting CAS and active research‐based learning. The productive online CAS seems to benefit both teacher candidates and their supervisors by promoting the co‐construction of the knowledge and skills of educational research, although more evidence is needed.
Lay Description
What is already known about this topic?
Collective Academic Supervision (CAS) is a collective model for students’ academic supervision to reduce their isolation and as a measure to establish a congenial culture and to develop networks with their peers.
Online academic supervision has transformed the traditional, individual supervisory relationship into a collective, participatory process that can capitalise on the strength of CAS.
Some teacher candidates failed to engage in the research processes, leading to less positive learning outcomes.
What this paper adds?
Most studies focus on the benefits of online CAS, leaving the pedagogical process and students’ learning experiences understudied. This research examines the participation and learning experience of a cohort of MEd students in online supervision that took place on a Moodle platform.
This study showed that the ‘3PBL’ model of online CAS provided a collaborative learning space to integrate students’ learning into social networking and facilitate peers’ and supervisors’ feedback‐giving.
Most students actively engaged in the online discussion. However, the functions of interactions were restricted to proposing questions/problems and providing information or solutions. Analysing and comparing others’ contributions which is the foundation of knowledge construction occurred less frequently.
Implications for practice and/or policy
The featured Moodle‐based collaborative learning space exemplifies an innovative technological and pedagogical design that can bring students and supervisors together to form a community of sharing and refining research.
The findings have provided an exemplary case regarding the application of the online learning environment in supporting CAS and active research‐based learning.
Collective, personalised and constructive feedback‐giving enhanced by the online platform can enhance student engagement in the process of academic supervision.
The productive online CAS seems to benefit both teacher candidates and their supervisors by promoting the co‐construction of the knowledge and skills of educational research, although more evidence is needed.
Teachers' professional identities, or the professional images teachers have of themselves, play an essential role in teachers' pedagogical knowledge and their propensity to stay in the profession. ...Even though with a shared recognition of the importance of professional identities among teachers, research is limited in terms of examining preservice teachers' professional identities in early childhood education (ECE). This study, thus, investigated Chinese ECE undergraduate students' perception of their identities as future teachers and the factors perceived to influence their professional identities. Altogether 182 preservice early childhood (EC) teachers were surveyed, and six graduates from the teacher training programmes were interviewed. Latent profile analyses generated three profiles of professional identity: low, medium, and high profiles. Regression analyses revealed that the year of study negatively predicted preservice teachers' profile of professional identity, while the academic competency positively predicted the profile. Further interviews indicated that the social images of EC teachers, professional learning in universities, and requirements in kindergartens were perceived as the main obstacles to achieving a high identity, which refers to a strong, emotional recognition of ECE, satisfaction with the teacher education programme, and positive career prospects.
Coaching is proven to be an effective strategy of professional development; however, rare research has documented the nuances of coaching effects and the enablers in early childhood education. This ...study presents a systematic review of 33 randomised controlled trials or (quasi-)experiments to investigate the effects of coaching as a professional development tool on early childhood teachers' instruction and young children's developmental outcomes. The synthesis of evidence revealed positive effects of coaching on teachers' knowledge gains and instructional competencies and a range of children's developmental outcomes (language and literacy, social-emotional development, and academic skills). We analysed the 'who', 'what' and 'how' components of coaching to explain the enabling factors surrounding the effects of coaching. Empirical evidence synthesised in this review supports the theoretical notions of situated learning derived from anthropological studies of apprenticeship, suggesting that coaching should be situated in the real teaching context for promoting its effects. This systematic review is the first to apply situated learning theory in discussing how coaching works and reveals a robust positive effect of coaching on teachers' knowledge gains and instructional abilities, and children's developmental outcomes. Guidelines that could help understand the application of coaching are provided to inform the scaling up of coaching-focused professional development programmes in early childhood settings. Implications of this research synthesis are also discussed for future research.
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