Classroom organization is an important facet of prekindergarten quality but is typically measured at a "global level" and as a "single construct." Little is known about how experiences of different facets of classroom organization--namely, exposure to teacher organizational strategies--vary across "individual…

Child-directed speech (CDS), which can help children learn new words, has been rigorously studied among infants and parents in home settings. Yet, far less is known about the CDS that teachers use in classrooms with toddlers and children's responses, an important question because many toddlers, particularly in high-need communities, attend…

Children's preschool experiences have consequences for development. However, it is not clear how children's real-time interactions with peers affect their language development; nor is it clear whether these processes differ between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and two other groups of children, those with general developmental…

General measures of process quality are widely used in the early childhood education (ECE) field. However, the evidence regarding associations between the most widely used process quality measure, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008), and children's school readiness gains during the preschool year is mixed. Using…

Measures of self-regulation may not capture adequate variability in children with low levels of self-regulation. This can limit a measure's ability to accurately demonstrate relations with other variables. The present study addressed this issue with a revised version of the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS-R), which includes a new downward…

Children's ability to monitor subjective feelings of uncertainty (i.e., engage in uncertainty monitoring) is a central metacognitive skill. The study examines the development of uncertainty monitoring as well as its relations with vocabulary and executive function development in children (N = 137, 52% female) from predominately White and…

Although basing instruction on a learning trajectory (LT) is often recommended, there is little evidence regarding the premise of a LT approach--that to be maximally meaningful, engaging, and effective, instruction is best presented one LT level beyond a child's present level of thinking. This hypothesis was evaluated for an empirically-validated…

Efforts to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school-aged children are associated with improved health, cognitive, and academic outcomes. However, questions remain about whether similar benefits are observed in early childhood. We hypothesized that motor competence, not MVPA, would be related to improved cognitive and…

The use of higher-order thinking talk (HOTT), where speakers identify relations between representations (e.g., comparison, causality, abstraction) is examined in the spontaneous language produced by 64 typically developing (TD) and 46 brain-injured children, observed from 14--58months at home. HOTT is less frequent in lower-income children and…

Almost five million children attend preschool in the United States each year. Recent attention has been paid to the ways in which preschool classrooms shape children's early language development. This article discusses the importance of peers and classroom composition through the lens of age and socioeconomic status and the implications for…

The present study reports associations between features of directly observed classroom processes and school readiness skills across the academic year for 1498 children enrolled in publicly funded pre-K programs in a large and diverse county. In models adjusting for a range of child and family covariates, evidence was detected for the separate, and…

The present study aimed to identify commonalities and points of divergence in the ways that parents, teachers, and administrators characterize children's transition from public pre-K into kindergarten within a large, diverse school district. A wide range of transition practices were in use across the district, including practices designed to…

As research continues to show the benefits of high-quality early childhood education, it is important to ensure that measures are available to assess the full impacts of these programs for student outcomes. Many achievement measures and observational measures exist, but there is a need for measures of children's experiences at the preschool level.…

Areas of misalignment between children's experiences in preschool and kindergarten are increasingly viewed as contributing to the fade-out of preschool effects. The current study examined alignment and misalignment of classroom experiences across the transition from public pre-k into kindergarten. As part of a longitudinal cohort study, we…

Children's relationships with teachers in kindergarten are crucial for academic and social success. Research shows that teacher-child relationships are predicated, in part, on children's temperament. The "INSIGHTS into Children's Temperament" intervention was intended to improve children's and teachers' understanding of their and others'…