Systematic review and meta-analysis of early childhood care and education training program impacts on teacher and provider outcomes

• In Event: Monitoring, evaluation, research and learning in ECD

Proposal

Background: Access to high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is essential to promote early childhood development (ECD). ECCE interventions, that are evidence-informed and culturally specific, are effective strategies to improve ECCE quality and in turn ECD. These training programs often contain modules on the nurturing care environment, such as health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, and the early learning of children. Some training programs also include business training for ECCE owners, stress management, and help to facilitate social networks within the ECCE community. Despite a recent increase in ECCE training programs, the vast majority of ECCE research focuses on ECCE quality and ECD as the primary outcomes of interest. Much less attention has been paid to ECCE teacher and provider outcomes, such as provider and teacher mental health, stress, and self-efficacy. This review summarizes the impact of ECCE training programs on teacher and provider outcomes.

Methods: We will search across five different databases for articles that report on the effects of ECCE training and include outcomes related to childcare provider and teacher support, burnout, stress, self-efficacy, mental health, and job satisfaction. The protocol will be registered on PROSPERO. We will include randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental studies across high-, middle- and low-income countries in the informal and formal childcare and preschool sectors. Cochrane will be used to assess the risk of bias for RCTs and the Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Nonrandomized Designs (TREND) statement checklist will be used to guide the reporting of nonrandomized or quasi-experimental studies. We will test for the causal impact of ECCE training programs on all outcomes of interest that have evidence from at least 10 RCTs. Evidence from RCTs and quasi-experimental studies will also be descriptively described and patterns will be reported on.

Results: We hypothesize that most articles that report on ECCE training programs will not report childcare provider and teacher inputs. Among ECCE interventions that do measure childcare provider and teacher outcomes, we hypothesize that high-quality ECCE interventions will predict a positive pooled impact on ECCE provider and teacher outcomes. We would expect ECCE interventions that include specific components targeting ECCE provider and teacher outcomes to have a larger pooled effect.

Discussion: The final presentation will include a discussion of the implication of these results for policy and practice. For example, we will discuss the significant need in the field of ECCE to focus more on the rights of ECCE providers and teachers. The vast majority of teaching and training in ECCE focuses solely on the needs of children. Although children should be the focus of any ECCE intervention, as a global community we need to recognize that ECCE providers have needs that, if left unaddressed, negatively impact ECCE quality and ultimately the children in their care.

Authors

• Elizabeth Hentschel, Yale Child Study Center

• Alya Alsager, Harvard University

• Dana Charles McCoy, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• Aisha K Yousafzai, Harvard