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In a Flash: A Primer of the Variations in Implementation of Quality Interventions (VIQI) Project

Wed, April 7, 1:10 to 2:40pm EDT (1:10 to 2:40pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

There is a convergence of evidence that the quality of children’s early care and education (ECE) experiences is critical for promoting children’s development (Gormley, Phillips, & Gayer, 2008). However, there is variation in the effectiveness of ECE programming (e.g., Bloom & Weiland, 2015) and a lack of rigorous evidence and consensus around which dimensions of ECE quality matter most for improving children’s outcomes. As a result, open questions remain about how best to design and target investments to ensure that children, particularly low-income children, receive and benefit from high-quality child care and early education programming on a large scale.

This presentation introduces the study design and conceptual framework for the Variations in Implementation of Quality Interventions: Examining the Quality-Child Outcomes Relationship in Child Care and Early Education project, which aims to build rigorous new evidence to inform ECE policies and practices by addressing the following research questions:
• Do different dimensions of quality and thresholds of quality yield different effects on child outcomes?
• Do the effects of quality on child outcomes differ, depending on child, staff, and center characteristics?
• Do ECE centers require varying levels of support to successfully implement and benefit from quality improvement efforts?

In doing so, the VIQI project aims to advance understanding of the quality-to-child outcomes relationship. The project revamps the field’s conceptualization and measurement of the dimensions of ECE quality by outlining the following dimensions of quality: (1) structural quality—structural or physical aspects of how early care and education classrooms are set up (e.g., availability of materials, arrangement of furniture); (2) interactional quality—the extent to which the classroom climate is positive, responsive, and predictable; and (3) instructional quality—what is being taught (e.g., skill domains, content) and how that information is being taught, including what instructional moves teachers use (e.g., asking open-ended questions, engaging in sustained discussions) and what activity settings are used (e.g., whole group, small group). Of particular importance is an increased focus and specification of instructional quality that articulates promising instructional practices, such as the use of rich content and individualized activity settings and the promotion of higher-order skills within a broad range of learning domains.

The VIQI project’s key design elements include a 3-group randomized controlled study testing two theoretically distinct interventions consisting of curricular and professional development supports that target different dimensions of quality. The project will examine how these interventions improve children’s development and learning across multiple domains in mixed-aged classrooms that serve 3- and 4-year-olds in community-based child care and Head Start settings that vary in their initial levels of quality. These interventions include Creative Curriculum (6th edition), which is hypothesized to prioritize promotion of structural and interactional quality, and Connect4Learning, which is hypothesized to prioritize instructional quality. In-depth implementation and outcome information is collected to understand the conditions that shape the installation and fidelity of implementation of the interventions, to test the effects of the interventions, and to examine how different levels and dimensions of quality causally relate with children’s developmental outcomes.

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