Fostering Effective Early Learning
By Tom McBride, director of evidence, Early Intervention Foundation
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
This exciting trial has demonstrated the substantial impact of a professional development course for early years practitioners on both the quality of early years settings and outcomes for a group of children living in New South Wales.
- Universities of Oxford and Wollongong, Australia (2018)
Given my job title is director of evidence it will probably come as little surprise to readers that I take a keen interest in research and spend a fair chunk of my week reading the latest findings on the factors that impact on typical development and what we know about what works to improve the chances for children at risk of poor life outcomes.
Some reports live longer in the memory than others. I don’t think there is any hard and fast rule for which studies I tend to recall with clarity. Sometimes it comes down to the sheer joy of the experiment, such as the 2018 study which found that four- and six-year-olds were better able to engage with repetitive tasks when dressed as a superhero. In other cases it’s about the further questions that the research raises, such as the 2015 experiment which showed large differences in the ability to delay gratification of German and Italian-speaking children living in the same northern Italian town. But sometimes studies stay with me because they raise serious implications for how we design and deliver policy – which is an essential if we are going to use evidence to improve the lives of children at risk of poor outcomes.
One recent example that falls into this category is the 2018 Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) study. This exciting trial – a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Wollongong, Australia – has demonstrated the substantial impact of a professional development course for early years practitioners on both the quality of early years settings and outcomes for a group of children living in New South Wales. The study conducted a randomised control trial (RCT) with more than 1,200 children to test a programme called Leadership for Learning, which was delivered to 90 staff members across 38 settings. Participants in the training were then expected to disseminate their new learning to professional colleagues and the families of children in their care.
The programme was designed to improve leadership, pedagogy and practice, and covered the foundational principles of child learning and development, including self-regulation, language and communication, conceptual development in maths and science, and critical thinking. It was delivered with a reasonable level of intensity: participants undertook two full days and five half days of training over a three-and-a-half-month period, with the opportunity to apply and adapt newly learned skills between sessions. Online support, including further resources and facilitated discussion, was also provided.
Results from the RCT are striking. Settings that received the intervention made a marked improvement in quality of curricula and child interactions, as measured by the rating scales Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale Extension (ECERS-E) and Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Well-Being (SSTEW). Crucially, these improvements in setting quality also translated to improvements in child outcomes, with children in settings that had received the intervention making improvements in language, numeracy and social and emotional outcomes compared with the control group. For example, children in the intervention group saw more than twice the level of improvement in verbal comprehension compared with those in the control group; and they also made comparative gains of over 20 per cent in number concepts and early numeracy.
Those in the intervention group also saw gains in children’s teacher-reported internalising behaviour, although no change was observed in teacher-reported externalising and prosocial behaviours or self-regulation. The study also showed some evidence of small improvements in certain areas being sustained into the first year of formal schooling, although these results are equivocal.
The study was not without issue though, with seven of the original 45 providers in the intervention group having to withdraw before the training programme began due to staffing and ownership changes. Barriers to course attendance relating to the ability to cover staff while on training, absence and turnover were also reported, and the support of colleagues and management was flagged as being a significant factor in the success of the intervention in a given setting.
Implications for practice
- It is of course important to remember that an approach working in Australia is no guarantee that the results will be replicated in the UK. Any number of cultural and demographic differences between the two countries could mean that a similar course would show less impact here. However, if high-quality professional development can be shown to be causally associated with improvements in child outcomes, the policy implications are significant.
- With this in mind, it is pleasing to see that the Department for Education is exploring the potential of professional development as a route to improving outcomes for disadvantaged children in the early years.
- Arising from commitments made in the Unlocking Talent Fulfilling Potential plan, the Professional Development Programme will employ a similar methodology to the FEEL study, using a cascade model to improve early years workers’ knowledge of child development, with a focus on improving their ability to deliver high-quality speech and language education in disadvantaged areas.
- It is pleasing to see that the department is committed to evaluating if this approach works. I will be the first in line to see the results and consider the implications for early years practice in this country.
