Children at the center: Promoting child development through evidence-based practice

A popular question for those concerned about early childhood development today involves whether and under what conditions nonparental care promotes child development. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an intervention of evidence-based practices on children's language and social skills in child care centers. An extensive review of the literature on effective child care practices for building language and social skills in preschoolers was compiled and incorporated into a curriculum of language and social skill practices and activities. All licensed child care centers with preschool classrooms in an urban city in the Midwest were randomly assigned to intervention or comparison group and were recruited for participation. Six child care centers, three in each group, and 69 preschoolers and 50 families participated in the study. Child care personnel in intervention centers were trained on the curriculum and performed the practices for 4 months. The integrity with which this curriculum was implemented was monitored, and data were collected on outcomes for preschoolers who received the curriculum compared to preschoolers in the comparison group. Effects of the intervention on child care environmental quality were also examined through structured observations. In addition, effects of family beliefs and practices for building children's language and social skills were investigated through interviews with environmental quality were assessed before and after the intervention. Families were interviewed during the intervention period. Results of the study suggested that receiving an intervention of evidence-based practices was associated with higher language scores and lower ratings of problem behaviors, accounting for 21% of the variance in post intervention language scores and 22% of the variance in post-intervention problem behavior ratings. Implementing the intervention also was associated with higher ratings of centers' environmental quality at a level approaching significance. Receiving the intervention accounted for a greater proportion of the variance in children's post-intervention scores than family demographic and survey response variables. Implications of the findings for future intervention efforts in child care centers are discussed.