Shared reading is associated with stronger vocabulary skills for nearly all children by three years of age, physicians at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Princeton University have found, showing this to be the case even for children who genetically may be vulnerable to barriers in learning, attention and behaviour development.

A survey of more than 2,000 parents of toddlers, including those with delayed speech, has found that there is a clear link between children’s vocabulary, or lack thereof, and what researchers termed “temper tantrums”, with scientists involved in the study finding that late talkers are twice as likely to have ‘severe, frequent temper tantrums.’

A groundbreaking new study conducted by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has found structural differences in the brains of preschool-age children related to their level of screen-based media use.

KnowledgeWorks and Capita, two US based not for profit organisations that explore the future of learning, and how rapidly transforming societies and cultures will impact children and their families, have released a new report that highlights a range of key themes and emerging issues of interest to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector going forward.

The amount of professional development (PD) received by early childhood teachers (ECTs), the affordability of such PD, and the resources to deliver PD can all be barriers to accessing the kind of training that supports educators to lay the foundation for cognitive and social-emotional development.