Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home (BEECH) A Home-Based Child Care Research Study A working paper from the Texas Early Learning Council October 2011

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Background The Texas Early Learning Council (TELC) is the designated State Advisory Council on Early Childhood Education and Care for Texas, under the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. Texas Governor Rick Perry established the 19-member Council in its application to the federal government for funding under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The Council will “enhance existing high-quality early childhood education and care programs.” Specifically, the Council requested funds to establish community-based pilots “that promote the development of a training and mentoring model with non-center based providers using evidence-based approaches that have worked in Texas.” Texas has the fastest-growing early childhood population in the nation. Today, Texas has nearly 3 million children under five years of age. To put that number in perspective, our state’s early childhood population is five times greater than the entire population of the state of Wyoming. Unfortunately, much of growth of our early childhood population is associated with conditions of poverty. Additionally, today’s families are facing child care costs that exceed the costs of many colleges and universities. Given these factors, it is not surprising that more and more families are choosing home-based child care options for their children. Home-based child care is often less expensive when compared with center-based care, making it attractive to many; however, state regulations and standards for these operations are lower than what is expected of center-based care providers. The use and prevalence of home-based care is high. For instance, almost 50% of children in the state are in home-based early childhood settings, and in Harris County alone there are 1,869 licensed and registered child care home operations. Unfortunately, although home base care is widely used, there are few quality initiatives aimed at this important group of providers. It is with all of these factors in mind that the Texas Early Learning Council decided to prioritize improving quality in home-based care settings in its application to federal government. The Council is utilizing existing expertise and resources to achieve success in this area. Children’s Learning Institute and the Texas Public Broadcasting Association are heading up the project for the Council, bringing a wealth of research, mentoring, and child development expertise to the project. It is the hope and vision of the Council that this project, Beginning Education: Early Education at Home (BEECH), will lay the foundation for an on-going state focus on improving school readiness outcomes for the important home-based child care population in Texas.

Rationale Preparing children for school begins in infancy. School readiness depends on socio-emotional and cognitive development that occurs through warm, sensitive and secure relationships with caregivers. Young children construct knowledge through these relationships and everyday play and routines. Caregivers can learn skills and strategies necessary to build positive relationships and have intentional interactions that help young children grow and develop. 2

Research Study Researchers at Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) are investigating the effectiveness of a web-based professional development program for home-based child care providers. The project, Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home (BEECH), is aimed at improving school readiness of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in home-based child care. BEECH is a randomized control trial two-year research study, the gold-standard in research, with each year comprised of a new cohort of child care providers and young children participating. In the first year, a sample of 90 registered and licensed child care home providers in the greater Houston area have been recruited for participation in the study. The providers were randomly assigned to three conditions (i.e., 30 providers in each condition): a) control, or “business as usual”; b) web-based professional development; and c) web-based professional development and in person weekly mentoring. Approximately 540 young children (6 weeks old to 5 years old) will be consented into the study. The study uses a pre-test/post-test design with a hypothesized significant effect for the intervention groups. The intervention phase begins November 2011 and ends April 2012, taking into account holiday breaks.

Types of Child Care in Texas Licensed Child-Care Centers:

Licensed Child Care Homes:

Registered Child Care Homes:

Licensed Child-Care Centers provide care for seven or more children under 14 years old for less than 24 hours per day at a location other than the permit holder’s home. All types of licensed facilities have published standards they are required to follow and are routinely monitored and inspected. The application process requires that the licensed operation provider receive orientation and background checks are conducted. A license is issued after licensing staff completes on-site inspection(s) to ensure minimum standards are met. Licensed facilities are inspected at least once every 12 months and to investigate reports alleging violations of standards or child abuse/neglect. Licensed Facilities include day care and 24 hour residential care.

Licensed Child Care Homes provide care for less than 24 hours per day for 7-12 children under 14 years old in the permit holder‘s own home. All types of licensed facilities have published standards they are required to follow and are routinely monitored and inspected. The application process requires that the licensed operation provider receive orientation and background checks are conducted. A license is issued after licensing staff completes on-site inspection(s) to ensure minimum standards are met. Licensed facilities are inspected at least once every 12 months and to investigate reports alleging violations of standards or child abuse/neglect. Licensed Facilities include day care and 24 hour residential care.

Registered Child Care Homes provide care in the caregiver’s home for up to six children under age 14; they may also take in up to six more school-age children. The number of children allowed in a home is determined by the ages of the children. No more than 12 children can be in care at any time, including children of the caregiver. The application process requires that a registered child care home provider complete an orientation class and receive clearances on background checks. A registration certificate is issued after licensing staff completes an on-site inspection to ensure minimum standards are met. Registered homes are inspected every 1-2 years and if a report is received related to child abuse/neglect or standards deficiencies.

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The 60 child care home providers that receive intervention will: a) attend three, four-hour, Saturday training sessions covering child development, early learning skills, responsive strategies, and webbased technological assistance; and b) complete a 20 session web-based professional development program. Additionally, 30 of the 60 intervention providers will have a mentor visit her weekly to ensure content knowledge acquisition, coach practice of new skills and strategies, and provide expert content and technical assistance. All family child care providers will receive three materials kits that support learning and a stipend for participation. The readiness materials kit includes consumables, such as paper, crayons, scissors, and paint. The early learners materials kit includes toys and materials for young children, such as books, dolls, manipulatives, pretend food, pots and pans and other similar materials. The early learners read aloud kit includes books with helpful information about what to do before, during, and after a book read. Also, extension activities with materials are provided. Parents also receive a stipend for completing questionnaires.

Intervention CLI partnered with Texas Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS) to develop 20 web-based professional development sessions. The course uses documentary video of caregivers and children interacting and supporting text resources to introduce child care practices. The sessions focus on teaching providers to support their young children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, language, literacy and mathematics development. They will learn specific behaviors that help them tune in to the children in their care, respond in a sensitive and contingent manner, and provide appropriate cognitive and language stimulation. Providers learn that as children grow, children need help controlling and managing their behavior, which includes using positive, developmentally appropriate discipline. Since most of the providers have a variety of age groupings, examples and discussions include multiple age suggestions. See appendix A for a list and brief explanation of each session. Trained mentors will meet with providers weekly to reinforce session content through in-depth discussion of concepts, guided goal-setting and coached practice of newly learned skills and strategies. Further face-to-face training occurs three times across the course as group training. They are four-hour long Saturday sessions where providers are introduced to new concepts and strategies to help young children learn and develop.

Outcomes Provider and child outcomes are measured by direct and indirect assessments. All assessments occur before the intervention period and after the intervention. Providers are observed for one hour interacting with children in their care during meal time, free play time, book reading, gross motor activities, and other learning activities. The observation measures providers’ general care-giving behaviors, book reading behaviors, oral language use, and early literacy and math activities. 4

Child outcomes include language development, socio-emotional development, executive functioning, and literacy and math development. Children are directly assessed by trained assessors in the providers’ child care homes, see Table 1. Assessors directly measure infant’s ability to understand language, while toddlers’ ability to use and understand language is directly assessed. Preschoolers’ language, letter and math knowledge, and executive functioning skills (i.e. mental necessary for planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space) are directly assessed.

Table 1. Direct Assessment of Young Children Receptive Language

Expressive Language

Infants

X

Toddlers

X

X

Preschoolers

X

X

Executive Functioning

Letter Knowledge

Math Concepts and Skills

X

X

X

Providers and parents complete questionnaires on children consented into the study to triangulate data and provide a full picture of children’s general and socio-emotional behavior. Additionally, parents provide information about their home environment and their reading behaviors with their children.

Conclusion To be truly effective in supporting children’s learning and development there must be an investment in those who care for children on a daily basis. In two years, BEECH will serve 180 home-based child care providers and 1,080 young children to determine the effectiveness of a web-based professional development program. The randomized control trial design provides the most rigorous form of evaluation to investigate the effectiveness of this intervention.  

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Appendix A: BEECH Professional Development Modules

Session 0: Overview BEECH has been developed to assist home child care providers and families with information that will help them identify key care behaviors that support children’s learning throughout the day.

Session 1: Setting Up the Environment for Learning Learning environments that provide a variety of opportunities for children help support their learning by providing a safe and inviting atmosphere to explore and have fun.

Session 2: Reading Children’s Signals Signals are clues to understanding what young children want and need. Signals are the way children learn to communicate with you. Young children have very individual, unique, and distinct needs, interests, and requests.

Session 3: Using a Warm Responsive Style, Part 1 Learning to respond warmly and sensitively to children’s needs helps them learn and become more confident in their abilities to accomplish tasks. Child care providers, who acknowledge and encourage children’s efforts, model and demonstrate behaviors, create challenges and support children in extending their capabilities, and provide specific directions or instructions are helping to develop social and cognitive skills in children.

Session 4: Using a Warm Responsive Style, Part 2 Learning to respond warmly and sensitively to children’s needs helps them learn and become more independent. This session focuses on other aspects of being responsive, such as what to do when children interrupt you when you’re busy, or when a child wants to do something that’s not okay to do. Even though it is hard to be responsive sometimes, it’s important to try since responsiveness helps children become more cooperative and trusting.

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Session 5: Labeling Objects and Actions Labeling occurs when you give an object, toy, or action a name when the child is interested in them. When you label objects and actions as you do activities with young children, like playing, reading, and doing everyday activities, you help build their vocabulary.

Session 6: Maintaining Children’s Interest to Support Learning This session focuses on the importance of noticing what young children are interested in and responding in a way that helps support or maintain children’s interests and attention. Maintaining children’s interests supports their learning about objects, places and people in their world.

Session 7: Introducing New Activities When young children are not showing an interest in anything or become uninterested in toys and/or objects, you may want to introduce or present them with another activity or toy to enjoy.

Session 8: Supporting Young Children’s Language Development There are five methods of talking to children that enhance their language development: naming, describing, comparing, explaining, and linking to children’s experience.

Session 9: Building Children’s Knowledge About their World Linking or scaffolding is a way to enhance children’s learning, thinking and language skills by making conceptual connections for children, such as connecting the name of the object with its actions. Examples of scaffolding include: objects have a special place, what objects are used for, how objects work, actions have names, and actions can go with objects.

Session 10: Supporting Young Children’s Emotional Development Responding to young children’s signals in a warm and accepting way will help children development strong emotional health. This responsive relationship between caregivers and children will produce happier, less withdrawn children with fewer behavior problems. By talking and responding to children they feel as if they have some control over their own environment, boosting their self-esteem and teaching them self-control. 7

Session 11: Supporting Young Children’s Behavior, Part 1 Early learning occurs within relationships. Caregivers help children learn to develop skills to regulate their own emotions and behaviors by planning ahead and using prevention strategies, sharing control with children, and being consistent, flexible, and sensitive.

Session 12: Using Responsive Behaviors throughout the Day The strategies learned so far can be used during daily activities with young children. For example, you can use sensitivity behaviors, respond contingently to signals, maintain children’s attention, introduce new objects and activities, and build children’s language during everyday activities, such as meal time, transitions, clean up time, and dressing.

Session 13: Supporting Reading with Young Children Reading books with children helps them learn new words, expand their knowledge about the world, improve listening skills, and teach them how to communicate.

Session 14: Building Early Math Skills Mathematics can be taught throughout the day. Problem solving is at the core of learning all other areas of mathematics. Caregivers support developing problem solving in young children by asking questions, allowing children to explore, and helping children recognize problems and come up with creative solutions. Before children start school, they develop early math skills, such as number sense and operations, geometry and spatial sense, measurement, and classification and patterns, by participating in formal and informal activities.

Session 15: Supporting Young Children’s Behavior, Part 2 Specific strategies that help children learn to cooperate and behave better include: giving choices, saying “no” less, using distractions, giving explanations, praising and encouraging positive behaviors, turning tasks into games, and giving one to two step directions.

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Session 16: Building Early Literacy Skills Early language and literacy skills are best learned through exploring and discovering in everyday moments between caregivers and children – reading books, talking, laughing and playing together. Children learn language when you talk to them and they communicate back to you. As children listen to stories and sing songs, they are beginning to learn skills that will help them learn how to read and write.

Session 17: How to Monitor Children’s Learning Progress Monitoring the progress of young children over time has an important role to play in revealing children’s prior knowledge, concept development, and ways of interacting with and understanding the world. Progress monitoring is part of the cycle of learning.

Session 18: Putting it all Together: Supporting the Whole Child Throughout the sessions, you have learned about the importance of various responsive strategies, such as reading signals, warm responding, labeling, linking, and how to approach behavior issues. This session discusses how putting all the strategies together and using them throughout the day can help young children become better at problem solving and coping with situations.

Session 19: Knowing Children: Developmental Red Flags Every child is unique, but they usually develop in a predictable sequence in reaching developmental milestones in speech and language, motor, and social/emotional domains. Although all children do not follow the same steps to reach a milestone, there are certain skills you can expect children to be doing from birth to age five. There may be “red flags,” or skills/behaviors a child may not be doing, that may be concerning to caregivers.

Session 20: Families as Partners Families are children’s first teacher, care provider and biggest supporter. As you work with children, you develop strong relationships with families. The relationships you build with families are as important as the relationships you build between children and yourself. Children learn how to communicate, solve problems, and behave from observing all the adults that are important to them. To include families as partners, you need good communication, and active participation of families in the child care and family home. 9

Appendix B: BEECH Online Module

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