Co-editing a Special Section/Special Issue of Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Dr. Martin Guhn

Healthy early childhood development, especially in the years prior to school entry has emerged as an issue of global significance. Central to determining the effectiveness of policies and programs in this context is the availability of robust data. To meet this need, the Early Development Instrument (EDI) was developed as a population-based measure of developmental outcomes at the time of school entry. Since its development in the late 1990s, the EDI has been introduced in a growing number of countries as part of an effort to provide small area level data on the developmental abilities of young children as they start school. The EDI measures five developmental domains, generally by teachers’ ratings on all children in the first year of school: physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and development, and communication skills and general knowledge. Beyond generating information on children’s development, these data inform program evaluation and planning as well as mobilizing communities around the needs of their children; highlighting strengths but also inequalities in children’s outcomes. EDI data have been linked to administrative and research data sets to investigate associations with family and community factors, utilized by communities for early childhood services and program planning, and have been embedded in a number of state and federal reporting systems.

Given the dearth of population level measures of early childhood development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, will be publishing this Special Section/Special Issue to focus on research that uses the EDI for a range of purposes in countries around the world. Working with esteemed colleagues from Canada and Australia – including Magdalena Janus, Linda J. Harrison and Sally Brinkman, Dr. Martin Guhn will be reviewing submissions related to cross-cultural or regional validation, comparative analysis across communities or countries, evaluation studies, studies focusing on subpopulations, or trajectories of children’s development, in either cross-sectional or longitudinal approaches. Knowledge Translation and knowledge mobilization are additional topics of interest as submissions are also being accepted from policymakers and practitioners.

If you would like to submit a paper for this special issue, please review the criteria, and submit by July 31, 2014.

Source: SPPH Summer activities series