Presentation by Professor Jacqueline Barnes                         
Discussant: Mette Gørtz        
Moderator: Stine Trentemøller    

This workshop will open with a presentation by Professor Jacqueline Barnes ‘Child Care Experiences and Language Development up to School Entry: Evidence from the UK longitudinal Families Children and Child Care study’. 

Time spent in group care might have a negative impact on language development. Children in groups may experience fewer and lower quality interactions than those at home or with one adult caregiver.  In addition, some research suggests that early experiences in group child care settings can contribute to behaviour problems. However, there is some evidence to support positive associations between cognitive development, not specifically language, and children’s early experience of group care in nurseries.  Several aspects of group experiences need to be considered to understand when groups may, or may not, be beneficial for young children, including age of onset, average hours and the quality.  Evidence from a UK longitudinal study will be used to explore the relevance of hours in maternal, non-maternal home-based and group child care to language development with assessments at three time points, 18, 36 and 51 months, taking into account family factors. 

Mette Gørtz will also discuss her investigation of the role of preschool quality for children’s cognitive development at the end of primary school. Based on unique and extremely rich Danish register data, five quality indicators have been constructed and they all quantify aspects of the composition of the staff in each preschool in the data. Econometric analyses using OLS show that four out of five indicators (i.e. a higher staff-to-child ratio, a higher share of male staff, a higher share of staff with formal preschool teacher training and a higher share of ethnic minority teachers) lead to small but statistically significant improvements in children’s test results in Danish. Boys benefit more from high quality in preschool than girls.  

Workshop seats (50) will be allocated on a first come, first served basis, and registration for a workshop will take place in the morning of the conference, during registration and coffee.