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Racism, a multidimensional system of oppression and exclusion, is part of the foundation of the United States and is detrimental to the health and well-being of Black communities and other racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) communities. There is an emerging body of literature that draws attention to the impact of racism and different racialized experiences on the lives of REM children. Based on the Racism + Resilience + Resistance Integrative Study of Childhood Ecosystem (R3ISE) and focused on attending to the interaction between racism and the cultural assets of REM families and communities, this review highlights how racism impacts REM children's healthy development and learning. In addition to calling for research that advances racial equity using the R3ISEintegrative model, we also identify policies that have some potential to ensure equity in economic stability and security, home and community environment, birth outcomes, and educational opportunities for REM children and their families.

This study used secondary data from the My Teaching Partner-Math/Science 2013-2016 randomized control trial to explore whether equitable sociocultural classroom interactions (see Curenton et al., 2019) were associated with the skills of 105 four- and five-year-olds (52% boys; drawn from 20 unique video recordings of preschool teachers/classrooms; 43% were Black, Latine, Asian, or other racially marginalized learners). Equitable interactions predicted children's skills with effect sizes ranging from small (0.01-0.44) to large (1.00). Moderation analyses revealed that when classrooms had more racially marginalized learners, teachers' use of equitable disciplinary and personalized learning practices were associated with higher executive functioning gains across prekindergarten. Findings illustrate how classroom composition can be a key indicator between equitable classroom interactions and young children's early skills.

This study used pre-academic and socioemotional data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth (ECLS-B) Cohort to examine the profiles of Black girls’ school readiness skills from preschool through kindergarten. In addition to examining profiles that emerged, analyses were conducted to determine whether family socio-economic status (SES), parenting, parental functioning, community social support, neighborhood quality, and early education experiences predicted the likelihood of being in a particular profile. Three profiles emerged: (1) Consistent Learner, (2) Struggling Learner, and (3) Excelling Learner. There was heterogeneity within these prekindergarten-to-kindergarten learning profiles; however, a relatively large group showed low achievement and aggression during these early years. Family demographics, parenting, parental functioning, and early education experiences predicted likelihood of being in a particular profile. Implications of how to support Black girls’ learning and adjustment from preschool through kindergarten are discussed.

The Special Issue on Early Care and Education (ECE) collaboration presents seven articles – followed by a commentary – that describe collaborations among different ECE programs. The article...

We collaborated with Early Head Start (EHS) coaches to qualitatively explore the feasibility delivering a professional development approach designed to enhance the quality of conversations in infan...

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to refine and validate the Assessing Classroom Sociocultural Equity Scale (ACSES), an observation tool for measuring equitable sociocultural...

During classroom conversations all aspects of children’s developing oral language skills, particularly their discourse and social communication (pragmatic) skills, combine with communicative interpersonal skills to foster school success. Few tools exist for teachers to assess children’s conversation skills in the classroom, but the Conversation Compass© Communication Screener (CCCS) was created to fill this void. This study examined the factor structure of an adapted version of the CCCS, the Conversation Compass© Communication Screener-Revised (CCCS-R). Factor analytic results indicated a four-factor structure that fits the data well. The study also investigated the CCCS-R’s convergent validity with the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals—Preschool (CELF-P) Descriptive Pragmatics Profiles subtest and predictive validity with the CELF-P Pre-Literacy Scale subtest. Results indicated the CCCS-R showed both convergent and predictive validity with those subscales. The CCCS-R aims to provide teachers, researchers, and clinicians with insights into preschoolers’ classroom conversation skills.

During qualitative phone interviews, middle-class, mostly married African American mothers ( N = 25) describe their child-rearing responsibilities, practices, and values. They explain (a) why they decided to stay home or take work leave to attend to child rearing, (b) how they divided child-rearing responsibilities with their husbands/romantic partners, (c) whether they faced unique parenting challenges raising African American children, and (d) whether they identified as feminists. Responses revealed the decision to stay home or take work leave comprised values about gender roles, concerns about the cost and/or quality of child care, and the availability of family-friendly workplace policies. Most couples shared child-rearing responsibilities, although mothers admit to doing more. Their unique parenting challenge was protecting their children from racism, stereotyping, and discrimination. Only one third of the mothers identified as being feminists. These results have implications for furthering our knowledge about African American coparenting from a positive, strength-based perspective.

The purpose of this study was to report preliminary reliability and validity data from the Conversation Compass© Communication Screener (CCCS), a teacher-reported language screener intended to capture children’s skills related to classroom conversations with peers and teachers. Three preschool teachers completed the CCCS and the Child Observation Record (COR) for 36 students. Results indicated six subscales – literacy, clarity, social communication, decontextualized thinking, grammar, and negative communication behaviours – in the CCCS were reliable at Cronbach’s alphas of .71 or greater. Results also indicated its concurrent validity with the COR. Lastly, analyses indicated the screener was sensitive to maturation in conversation skills in that the measure was correlated with age. Implications are discussed in relation to how teachers can use this tool to inform their classroom practices.

This study used a multilevel mediation model to test the theory that former early childhood education (ECE) attendees' 5th grade achievement is mediated by the aggregate school-wide achievement of their elementary school. Aggregate school-wide achievement was defined as the percentage of 5th graders in a school who were at/above academic proficiency in reading or math. Research questions were: (a) Do ECE program participants have better achievement at 5th grade compared with their matched peers who did not participate in an ECE program?; and (b) Is the association between ECE attendance and 5th grade academic performance mediated by school-wide achievement? Results indicated that children who attended prekindergarten (pre-K) and child care outperformed their matched peers who had not attended ECE programs; conversely, those children who did not attend ECE actually outperformed their Head Start counterparts. Mediation analyses indicated that aggregate school-wide achievement at 5th grade partially mediated the association between former ECE attendance and 5th grade performance; however, these mediated effects were small. Overall, the size of the total effects of ECE and the 5th grade academic outcomes were consistent with prior studies. This research confirms the long-term effects of pre-K and child care until 5th grade.

The present study investigated the effect of professional development (PD) on preschool teachers’ conversational responsivity in the classroom, defined as teachers’ use of strategies to promote children's participation in extended conversational exchanges (communication-facilitating strategies) and exposure to advanced linguistic models (language-developing strategies), and the resultant impact on proximal child language outcomes. We randomly-assigned 49 preschool teachers to receive 15–20 h of such PD (PD; n = 25) or to a comparison condition ( n = 24). Growth curve analysis indicated that trained teachers used significantly more communication-facilitating strategies across the year but no such difference for language-developing strategies. Moreover, children in these classrooms showed greater linguistic productivity and complexity in their talk. These findings suggest that PD may alter some aspects of teachers’ conservational responsivity responsible for increasing the amount and complexity of child language. Alteration of some strategies, however, may require more intensive PD efforts.

Dyadic shared‐reading and oral storytelling practices and their association to American preschoolers’ (N = 33) prosocial and problem behaviour was examined. The frequency (how often dyads read) and history (the child’s age at first reading) were examined within shared‐reading; emotion state talk and evaluative judgments were examined in both shared‐reading and oral storytelling. Results revealed mothers used more positive emotion talk during shared‐reading, but more negative emotion talk during oral storytelling. Mother–son dyads used more evaluative judgments during oral storytelling compared to shared‐reading and compared to mother–daughter pairs in both contexts. Shared‐reading practices were associated with prosocial skills, but this result was nonsignificant after including covariates. On the contrary, even after covarying literacy and language skills, there was a significant negative correlation between positive emotion state talk during oral storytelling and problem behaviour. Qualitative examples ...

This special issue presents quantitative and qualitative research on how narratives can be used as learning tools to promote school readiness. The articles focus on interventions investigating how families' oral narrating style impacts children's school readiness and how schools introduce children to narratives via teacher instruction, books, and testing assessments. The sample populations in the studies range in diversity from migrant Head Start families to Midwestern European American kindergartens to rural South African children living in Kwazulu-Natal. The issue contributes to the literature on children's narratives by sharing the work from researchers around the world who describe the implications of their studies in terms of family cultural traditions and early childhood education policies, practices, and intervention programs in various countries.

Discriminant function (DF) analysis was used to distinguish 92 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse maltreating versus nonmaltreating families on indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) and parenting stress. Families included those with substantiated reports of child maltreatment ( n = 23), plus Head Start families ( n = 36), and child care families ( n = 33) without reports of maltreatment. The significant SES distinguishers were poverty and parental education and employment. The significant parenting stress distinguishers were parental self-reports of a dysfunctional parent–child relationship and difficult child temperament. Maltreating and Head Start families were similar in terms of poverty, but only the maltreating families had clinical levels of parenting stress. Implications for family therapy and early childhood education interventions are discussed.

Research Findings: This research investigated the associations among children's preliteracy skills, mothers' education, and mothers' beliefs about shared-reading interactions for 45 Appalachian families. These variables were studied for lower income, primarily European American, families residing in a geographically isolated, small, rural community in the Appalachian Mountains. Children's performance on standardized measures of preliteracy skills pertaining to print concepts and alphabet knowledge was substantially lower than normative references, but their performance on tasks assessing their understanding of environmental print was similar to normative references. The preliteracy skills of children with more educated mothers were significantly better than those of children with less educated mothers. More educated mothers had higher ratings on a measure of parental beliefs about shared reading than less educated mothers had; however, maternal reports of the frequency of home literacy practices were simi...

This study examined 33 mothers' and preschoolers' oral language skills (decontextualized discourse) across an emergent reading, shared reading, and oral storytelling interaction. The sample comprised primarily African American families from various socioeconomic backgrounds, ranging from Head Start families to middle-income families. Two measures of decontextualized language were assessed—literate language features and type of talk (i.e., a coding scheme categorizing comments/questions on a continuum from contextualized to decontextualized talk). Mothers used more decontextualized language during the oral storytelling interaction versus the other interactions, but children used more during the emergent reading interaction. Mothers with advanced literacy skills were more likely to make decontextualized comments/questions and use mental/linguistic verbs during the interactions. Results are discussed in terms of implications for parent–child home literacy interventions.

Two studies investigated the influence of age, language, and family background on the development of preschoolers' social cognitive skills. Study 1 examined variability in economically disadvantaged preschoolers' understanding of fantasy and evaluated the relation of age and language to children's skill in this area. Children were shown drawings of fantasy and real-life events and asked if the event could happen in real life and to justify their responses. Children were more likely to answer correctly when the drawing depicted real-life events. Age and language were positively related to children's overall understanding of fantasy. In Study 2, both low and middle SES preschoolers were included and two false belief understanding measures were added to the battery of tasks. As before, age and language were related to fantasy understanding as well as to false belief performance. In addition, SES was predictive of fantasy understanding, but not false belief performance, regardless of how it was assessed. Social competence was unrelated to the social cognitive variables, even when the effects of age, language, and SES were controlled.

Purpose: Low-income preschoolers’ use of literate language features in oral narratives across three age groups (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) and two ethnic groups (Caucasian and African American) was examined. Method: Sixty-seven preschoolers generated a story using a wordless picture book. The literate language features examined were simple and complex elaborated noun phrases, adverbs, conjunctions, and mental/linguistic verbs. Results: Literate language features occurred at measurable rates for 3- to 5-year-old children. Conjunction use was positively associated with the use of complex elaborated noun phrases and adverbs, and the use of complex and simple elaborated noun phrases was inversely related. There were no differences between African American and Caucasian children’s usage rates. Age-related differences were observed in the use of mental/linguistic verbs and conjunctions. Clinical Implications: The importance of supporting decontextualized language skills during the preschool period is discussed.

This study investigated the relationship between narrative skills and theory of mind for low-income children. Two groups of low-income preschoolers, one African American (n = 33) and one European American (n = 36), created a narrative and participated in a false belief task. The European Americans outperformed African Americans on the false belief task, but there were no differences in the narrative skills across the groups. After controlling for children's age, false belief performance had no effect on European Americans' narrative abilities. However, African Americans who passed the false belief task told stories that were more grammatically coherent and social cognitively sophisticated than those African American children who did not pass the task.

This study examined low-income African American and European American preschoolers' socioemotional causal attributions. Forty-seven Young (M = 48 months) and Old (M = 62 months) preschoolers were asked to justify a puppet's current emotion and to talk about their past emotional experiences. Responses were coded for Causal Theme and Clarity. Old preschoolers were twice as likely to attribute interpersonal themes, and Young preschoolers were 4 times more likely to generate causal themes that were uncodeable. In terms of clarity, children provided clearer responses for anger and fear than they did for happiness. Old preschoolers' explanations for emotions were clearer than young preschoolers' and young African Americans', who had the most difficulty explaining emotions. Results indicate that younger preschoolers, particularly young African Americans, may need help articulating emotions. Suggestions for how adults can scaffold preschoolers' emotional reasoning are discussed.

This chapter focuses on the strengths of racial and ethnically diverse families, especially immigrant and low-income families, and the importance of valuing and respecting family customs and traditions. Many of these families are resourceful and resilient, which can have implications for the strategies that practitioners use in bolstering families’ skills, knowledge, and abilities.

This chapter focuses on the challenges diverse families face. The implications of these challenges will be discussed, including how practitioners can address these challenges during their interactions with families, such as strengthening their knowledge base and providing information about resources.

This chapter describes the CRAF-E4 family engagement model. This model is presented as a way to increase an organization’s capacity to engage and partner with racially and ethnically diverse families.

This chapter focuses on the biases and stereotypes that practitioners may bring to their relationships and interactions with families. These biases and stereotypes may impact the relationships and interactions that practitioners have with families. They may lead to low expectations of what minority families are capable of in supporting their children’s development and learning and eventual future success.

This chapter provides an opportunity for practitioners to learn about the diversity within the United States. For instance, we will describe the change in family demographics and structure that has occurred over the past 50 years by showing current population trends in race/ethnicity, poverty rate, family structure, and immigration status.

This study examined mother-child interactions across two types of reading interactions—shared reading versus emergent reading—in order to determine (a) if mothers and children provide the same amount of language input across the two interactions, (b) if the socioemotional quality is consistent across the interactions, and (c) if the language input and socioemotional quality across the two interactions are differentially associated with children’s scores on early literacy assessments. Twenty-five mother-child dyads participated in both interactions. Children were given a standardized test of early reading and an emergent reading score based on a rubric designed particularly for the book they were reading. Results indicated that during the shared reading mothers provided more language input (i.e., they talked more), but children increased their amount of talk during the emergent reading, making such input effects null. Overall, socioemotional quality was consistent across the two interactions, except mothers provide more literacy feedback during shared reading. Both language input and socioemotional quality were associated with higher scores on early literacy assessments, but the contribution of these factors varied depending across the type of reading interaction. Results are discussed in terms of education implications for literacy practices at home and school.

Purpose This study examined the extent to which teacher responsivity education affected preschoolers' language and literacy development over an academic year. Additional aims were to determine whether children’s initial language abilities and teachers' use of responsivity strategies were associated with language outcomes, in particular. Method In this randomized controlled trial, preschool centers were assigned to a responsivity education intervention ( n = 19 centers, 25 teachers, and 174 children) or a “business-as-usual” control condition ( n = 19 centers, 24 teachers, and 156 children). Teachers within the intervention centers received training focused on a set of strategies designed to promote children’s engagement and participation in extended conversational interactions across the school day. Results Hierarchical linear models showed no main effects on children’s language skills, although moderating effects were observed such that the intervention appeared to have positive effects for children with relatively high initial language abilities. In addition, teacher use of responsivity strategies was positively associated with vocabulary development. With regard to children’s literacy skills, there was a significant main effect of the intervention on print-concept knowledge. Conclusions Although teacher responsivity education is viewed as benefitting children’s language and literacy development, the impacts of this type of intervention on children’s skills warrant further investigation. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6170192

A group of 72 preschoolers (36 African Americans, 36 European Americans) enrolled in Head Start programs and other preschools serving low-income children were asked 3 variations of false-belief questions across 3 scenarios and given a language and cognition subtest. Children's performance varied across the questions and tasks, but after covarying for children's language and cognitive scores, those effects were no longer found to be significant. Age effects were still significant even after differences in children's language and cognitive abilities had been accounted for. Although no language and cognitive differences were found among European Americans and African Americans, the European Americans still outperformed African Americans on 1 of the task scenarios. Those results demonstrate (a) the importance of considering testing procedures and language and cognitive abilities when assessing children's social cognitive skills and (b) that age-related changes in false-belief understanding are associated with social cognitive conceptual changes that are independent of language and cognitive skills.

There are numerous studies and education policy reports have documented the lower school readiness skills, both in terms of achievement and social competence, of Black children compared to their White peers (Aud, Fox, & KewalRamani, 2010; Haskins & Rouse, 2005; West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken, 2000). Similarly, studies have shown significant differences in early literacy, language, and numeracy by kindergarten (K) entry for Blacks compared to Whites (Joe & Davis, 2009; Matthews, Kizzie, Rowley, & Cortina, 2010; Rashid, 2009; Tsoi-A-Fatt, 2010). Many studies that investigate the complexity of Black children's achievement and social outcomes by deeply examining the interplay of home and neighborhood factors focus on adolescent populations (Bowen & Bowen, 1999; Gonzales et al., 1996; Rankin, & Quane, 2002). However, given the evidence that the early years lay the foundation of later school and future success, it is critical to determine the factors that support Black children's development and learning during these years. Therefore, in the present study the authors investigate Black children's school success during elementary school and attempt to examine their academic achievement and social development using a theoretical framework that would include the complexity of both home and neighborhood environments.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKThis study is guided primarily by Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Theory (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000); however, the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST; Spencer, Dupree, & Hartman, 1997) and the Integrative Model on Minority Children's Development (Garcia Coll, Lamberty, Jenkins, McAdoo, Crnic, Wasik, & Garcia, 1996) are used to supplement Bronfenbrenner's model. The bioecological framework postulates that children develop within a layered context of interconnected systems such as the home, neighborhood, and school environments. Ecological contexts are characterized by both interpersonal interactions (e.g., parental responsiveness) and environmental structure features (e.g., the percent of minority enrollment within a school); in addition, these contexts are characterized by features of growth/change, such as the age/grade of the child and chronicity (e.g., length of time). Both PVEST and Garcia Coll and colleagues' integrative model provide a framework for examining the multiple social factors that shape and constrain such ecological contexts. For instance, Black children's development and learning is not only effected by their home environment but also through America's social stratification system that is based on race, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) and society's history and cultural traditions that are based on racism, SES, and gender oppression. Taken together, these three frameworks provide the specificity and flexibility to decipher which factors of Black children's environment are likely to be associated with academic success across the early childhood elementary school years.RATIONALE FOR EXAMINING MULTIPLE ECOLOGICAL CONTEXTSSince children's success can be affected by multiple ecological contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007), it is important to examine these multiple contexts. Although the ecological contexts are interconnected, it is also important to examine their unique contributions to children's academic and social growth, especially those outside of school like the home environment and neighborhood. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which home and neighborhood factors in kindergarten are linked to Black children's academic and social growth from kindergarten to third grade.This study uses a longitudinal framework to examine the effect of home and neighborhood factors on Black children's growth during the early elementary years using a large-scale, nationally-representative sample. Relatively few studies have used longitudinal designs to understand whether change in multiple ecological systems would be related to change in Black children's academic achievement and social skills. …