E4Kids

Project Director

Prof Collette Tayler

Project Details

Effective Early Educational Experiences, or E4Kids, is the most extensive longitudinal study ever conducted into the impact and effectiveness of early childhood education and care in Australia, as well as outcomes for children who do not attend programs.

Over five years, we followed almost 2,500 children in Victoria and Queensland, measuring their progress as they participate in childcare, pre-school and family day care programs.

Our research examined the contributions made by different programs to children's learning and development over time, featuring children in both home-based and centre-based environments as a part of the study.

E4Kids overview of findings (PDF, 6.1 MB)

Researchers

Funding

E4Kids was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project (LP) Scheme (Grant LP0990200) in partnership with the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the Queensland Department of Education and Training.

Research Outcomes

Brochures

This brochure provides a brief overview of the E4Kids study including partners, study aims and key research questions.

E4Kids National Brochure

Research Bulletins

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 1 - December 2011 (PDF)

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 2 - January 2012 (PDF)

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 3 - July 2012 (PDF)

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 4 - May 2013 (PDF)

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 5 - August 2013 (PDF)

E4Kids Research Bulletin Issue 6 - April 2015 (PDF)

Research Seminars

The E4Kids Team regularly holds Research Seminars in Queensland and Victoria. Upcoming and past events can be found here.

Kevin McGrew – September 2010 "Reflections on 35 Years of Intelligence Testing"

Mona Bekkhus - May 2010 "Optimal care? 9-months fully paid maternal leave, high quality care and associations with Child behaviour at 3 years"

Gordon Cleveland - February 2010 "Selection Effects in the E4Kids Longitudinal Study"

Gordon Cleveland - February 2011 "Quality in Quebec Child Care Centres: What Matters and How Much?"

Iram Siraj-Blatchford - August 2011 "Performing Against the Odds: How working class kids succeed in education

Erin Birch - October 2011 "Indigenous Wisdom for Future Generations"

Bente Jensen - August 2012 "How can we address Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) more effectively"

Iram Siraj-Blatchford - October 2012 "Effective Pedagogy in Primary Schools in English and Maths"

Linda Mitchell - Nov 2012 "Lessons from NZ Policy Approaches"

Prof. Collette Tayler - Nov 2012 "DEAN'S LECTURE; Usage Pattern in Australian ECEC Program

Gordon Cleveland - Dec 2012 "The Determinants of Interaction Quality in Australian Child Care: A Production-Function Approach"

Conference proceedings

The Determinants of Interaction Quality in Australian Child Care: A Production-Function Approach.

Cleveland, G. Tayler, C. & Cloney, D.

  • Presented at: joint International Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) 5 December, 2012.

Economies of Scale and Scope and the Structure of Costs in Australian Early Childhood Services.

Cleveland, G., Colley, S.,  Tayler, C. & Cloney, D.

  • Presented at: joint International Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) 5 December, 2012.

Playing with maths: does implementation dosage affect children¹s learning outcomes? Preliminary findings and recommendations for future curriculum-based implementation studies in early childhood settings.

Cohrssen, C.,  Tayler, C. & Cloney, D.

  • Presented at: Biennial Australian Implementation Conference 2012. 26, October 2012

Teacher-Child Interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care: An Australian Study

Tayler, C., Ishimine, K., Thorpe, K., & Cloney, D.

  • Presented at: Society for Research in Child Development (SRDC) 2011 Biennial Meeting; Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 31 – April 2 2011

Children’s social networks and friendship quality across different early childhood education and care setting in Australia

Staton, S., Thorpe, K., Tayler, C., Dyson, R., & Canning-Ure, A.

  • Presented at: 15th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Bergen Norway, August 23-27 2011

Adaptation of the Friendship Bus Story for Assessment of Social Bridging and Social Inclusion

Thorpe, K., Staton, S., Bell-Booth, R., Thompson, C., Tayler, C., Cloney, D., Dyson, R., & Canning-Ure, A.

  • Presented at: 15th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Bergen Norway, August 23-27 2011.

Published Research

Publications

2017

Ph.D Cassandra Pattinson. Weight status of young children: The effect of sleep and light exposure.
Pattinson et al Weighing in on international growth standards: "Testing the case in Australian preschool children" - Obesity reviews.
Pattison et al Beyond duration: Investigating the association between sleep parameters and the weight status of children Sleep Health.

E4Kids overview of findings (PDF, 6.1 MB)

2016

Brookes, I. & Tayler, C. (2016). Effects of an evidence based intervention on the language development of young Aboriginal children, Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, Special Issue, October.

Cloney, D., Cleveland, G., Tayler, C., Hattie, J. & Adams, R. (2016). The selection of ECEC programs by Australian families: a story of quality, availability, usage and family demographics, Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, Special Issue, October.

Cloney, D., Nguyen,C., Adams, R., Tayler, C., Cleveland, G & Thorpe, K. (2016). Psychometric properties of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pre-K): implications for measuring interaction quality in diverse early childhood settings. Journal of Applied Measurement.

Cohrssen, C, Church, A., & Tayler, C. (2016). Play based mathematics activities as a resource for changing educator practice and behaviour, Sage Open, April-June, 1-14.

Cohrssen, C. & Tayler, C. (2016) Early childhood mathematics: A pilot study in pre-service teacher education. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 73(1), 25-40.

Cohrssen, C., De Quadros-Wander, B., Page, J. & Klarin, S. (2016) Between the big trees: A project-based approach to investigating shape and spatial thinking in a kindergarten program. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood.

Cohrssen, C., Niklas, F. & Tayler, C. (2016). ‘Is that what we do?’ Using a conversation analytic approach to highlight the contribution of dialogic reading strategies to educator-child interactions during storybook reading in two early childhood settings. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16,(3), 361-382.

Cohrssen, C., Niklas, F., Logan, D., & Tayler, C. (2016) The self-reported academic self-concept of four-year-old children: global and fixed, or nuanced and changing in the year before school? Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 41(3), 4-10.

D’Aprano, A., (2016). Challenges in developmental monitoring in remote Aboriginal health services: findings and recommendations for improving practice? Rural and Remote Health.

Niklas, F. Cohrssen, C., & Tayler, C. (2016). Parents supporting learning: A non-intensive intervention supporting literacy and numeracy in the home learning environment. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(2), 121-142.

Niklas, F., & Tayler, C. (2016). Room quality and composition matters: Children’s literacy and numeracy abilities in Australian early childhood settings. (Under review).

Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C. & Tayler, C. (2016). The sooner, the better: Early reading to children. Sage Open.

Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C., Tayler, C. & Schneider, W. (2016). Erstes Vorlesen: Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm (Early Reading to Children: The Early Bird Catches the Worm), Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie (German Journal of Educational Psychology). 30(1), 35-44.

Niklas, F., Gilley, T. & Tayler, C. (2016). Vulnerable children in Australia: Multiple risk factor analyses to predict cognitive abilities and problem behavior, Australian Journal of Education, (revision under review).

Niklas, F., Nguyen, C., Cloney, D., Tayler, C. & Adams, R. (2016). Self-report measures of the home learning environment in large scale research: Measurement properties and associations with key developmental outcomes. Learning Environments Research Journal, 19(2), 181-202.

Niklas, F., Tayler, C., Cohrssen, C. (2016, under review). Bilingual children’s language learning in Australian early childhood education and care settings. Research Papers in Education, Special Issue: Teacher-child interactions in ECEC classrooms: characteristics, predictivity, dependency, and methodological issues.

Simpson, S., D'Aprano, A., Tayler, C, Khoo, S.T., & Highfold, R. (2016). Validation of a culturally adapted developmental screening tool for Australian Aboriginal children: early findings and next steps, Early Human Development, 103, 91-95.

Sinclair, D., Staton, S., Pattinson, C., Smith, S., Marriott, A., & Thorpe, K. (2016.) What parents want: Parent preference regarding sleep for their preschool child when attending Early Care and Education. Sleep Health, 2(1), 12-18.

Staton, S., Marriott, A., Pattinson, C., Smith, S. & Thorpe, K. (2016) Supporting Sleep in Early Care and Education: An assessment of observed sleep-times using a sleep practices optimality index. Sleep Health, 2(1), 30-34.

Staton, S., Smith, S., Pattinson, C. & Thorpe, K. (2016). Mandatory naptimes and group napping trajectories in childcare: An observational study. Behavioural Sleep Medicine, 00, 1-15.

Tayler, C., Cloney, D., Adams, R., Ishimine, K., Thorpe, K., Nguyen, T.K.C, (2016). Assessing the effectiveness of Australian early childhood education and care experiences: study protocol. BMC Public Health, 16, 352.

2015

Cloney, D., Cleveland, G., Hattie, J. & Tayler, C.(2015). Variations in the availability and quality of early childhood education and care by socioeconomic status. Early Education and Development.

Cohrssen C. & Page, J. (2015) Articulating a rights-based argument for mathematics teaching and learning in early childhood education. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood.

Cohrssen, C., Tayler, C. & Cloney, D. (2015). Playing with maths: implications for early childhood mathematics teaching from an implementation study in Melbourne, Australia, Education 3-13, 43:6, 641-652.

D’Aprano, A. Silburn, S., Oberklaid, F., & Tayler, C. (2015). Culturally appropriate training for remote Australian Aboriginal Health Workers: Evaluation of an early child development training intervention. Journal of Developmental and Behavioural Pediatrics, 0, 1-9.

Deans, J., & Cohrssen, C. (2015). Young children dancing mathematical thinking. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(3), 61-67.

Gilley, T., Tayler, C., Niklas, F. & Cloney, D. S. (2015). Too late and not enough for some children: Early childhood education and care (ECEC) program usage patterns in the years before school in Australia. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 9(9).

Hildenbrand, C., Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C., & Tayler, C. (2015) Children’s mathematical and verbal competence in different early education and care programs in Australia, Journal of Early Childhood Research, 1-14.

Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C. & Tayler, C (2015). Home learning environment and fluid reasoning: A family intervention study with kindergarten children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44(5), 419-427.

Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C. & Tayler, C (2015). Improving pre-schoolers’ numerical abilities by enhancing the home numeracy environment. Early Education & Development. 27(3), 372-383.

Niklas, F., Tayler, C. & Schneider, W. (2015). Home-based literacy activities and children’s cognitive outcomes: A comparison between Australia and Germany. International Journal of Educational Research, 71, 75-85.

Pollitt, R., Cohrssen, C., Church, A. & Wright, S. (2015). Thirty-one is a lot: Assessing four-year-old children’s number knowledge during an open ended activity. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(1), 13-22.

Staton, S., Irvine, S., Pattinson, S., Smith, S. & Thorpe, K. (2015). The sleeping elephant in the room: Practices and policies regarding sleep-rest time in early childhood education and care. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(4), 77-86.

Staton, S., Smith, S. & Thorpe, K. (2015). “Do I really need a nap? The role of sleep science in informing sleep practices in early childhood education and care settings. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 1(1), 32-44.

Staton, S., Smith, S., Pattinson, C. & Thorpe, K. on behalf of the Sleep in Early Childhood Research Group. (2015). Mandatory naptimes in childcare and children’s night-time sleep. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 36, (4), 235-242.

Tayler C., Cloney, D.,& Niklas, F. (2015). A bird in the hand: understanding the trajectories of development of young children and the need for action to improve outcomes. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(3), 51-60.

Tayler, C. (2016). Reforming Australian early childhood education and care provision (2009-2015). Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 41(2), 27-31.

Tayler, C. (2015). Learning in Early Childhood: experiences, relationships and 'learning to be', European Journal of Education, 50(20).

Thorpe, K., Staton, S., Sawyer, E., Pattinson, C., Hayden, C. & Smith, S. (2015). Napping, development and health from 0 to 5 years: a systematic review. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 0:1-8.

2014

Barber, H., Cohrssen, C. & Church, A. (2014) Meeting the Australian National Quality Standards: a case study of the professional learning needs of early childhood educators, Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 39(4), 21-27.

Cohrssen, C., Church, A. & Tayler, C. (2014.) Pausing for learning: Responsive engagement in mathematics activities in early childhood settings. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. 39(4) 95-102.

Cohrssen, C., Church, A., &Tayler, C. (2014). Purposeful pauses: Teacher talk in early childhood mathematics activities. International Journal of Early Years Education.

Pattinson, C., Staton, S., Smith, S. Sinclair, D, & Thorpe, K. (2014). Emotional climate and behaviour management during sleep-time in early childhood education settings. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29, 660-668.

2013

Cohrssen, C, Church, A., Tayler, C., & Ishimine, K. (2013). Playing with maths. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. 38(1) 95-99.

Ishimine, K. & Tayler, C. (2013). Assessing quality in early childhood education and care, European Journal of Education: Research Development and Policy.

Tayler, C., Ishimine, K., Cloney, D., Cleveland, G and Thorpe, K. (2013). The quality of early childhood education and care services in Australia. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 38, (2), 13-21.

Thorpe, K., Bell-Booth, R., Staton, S., & Thompson, C.,(2013) Bonding and bridging: Transition to school and social capital formation among a community of Indigenous Australian children. Journal of Community Psychology, 00 (0), 1-17.

2012

Davis, E., Eivers, A. & Thorpe, K. (2012). Is quality more important if you’re quirky? A review of the literature on differential susceptibility to childcare environments. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(4), 99-106.

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Download Research Publications

E4Kids Final Research Report:

Download Research Publication [PDF]