Quality of Early Learning Environments: Measures, Validation, and Effects on Child Development

Abstract

Individual differences and disparities in educationally relevant competencies and skills evolve from the very beginning of a child’s life. This chapter focuses on early learning environments as an important basis for acquiring those competencies and skills that depend and impact on education. Drawing on the Newborn Cohort Study of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC1) and additional validation studies, we address and empirically evaluate different quality measures of parenting behaviour and extrafamilial childcare along with their effects on early child outcomes. Results highlight the importance of considering differentiated measures of early learning environments such as indicators of cognitive-verbal stimulation or parental responsive emotional support from the very beginning, because these relate differentially to various domains of early child development. Furthermore, although different facets of interaction quality are associated with socio-economic family characteristics (SES), they relate to each other only moderately. In addition, we report on the validity and effects of quality measures of early external childcare in the NEPS-SC1 and discuss the emergence of individual differences and SES-related disparities in early child development.