Our work in early childhood education

Better evidence for early childhood education

In 2019, Evidence for Learning expanded its work into early childhood education. Investment in early childhood education provides a strong return for our country. A recent study shows for every dollar invested into quality early childhood education, Australia receives $2 back over a child’s life.¹

We have an opportunity to increase the benefits of early childhood education by helping great practice become common practice across the system. Building rigorous and relevant research on early learning approaches increases the body of knowledge educators can draw on in making their decisions. Ensuring this evidence gets into the hands of educators across the system helps all children to make the best progress possible.

Our early childhood education work is national but with a specific focus on Queensland.

Download a brochure to read more about our early childhood education work (1.3 MB, PDF).

Our current work in early childhood education

Building evidence: new research projects

Evidence for Learning is in the process of commissioning two independent research projects on promising initiatives and practices in early childhood education and the transition to primary school. All findings will be publicly reported in plain English.

Sharing evidence: the Early Childhood Education Toolkit

In July 2019, Evidence for Learning released the initial version of its free, online summary of global education research via the Early Childhood Education Toolkit (ECE Toolkit). The ECE Toolkit is designed to support educators who are making decisions about how to improve outcomes for children. The ECE Toolkit summarises 12 approaches in terms of the:

	average months’ worth of learning progress;
	cost to implement; and
	the security of evidence.

The ECE Toolkit includes summaries of Australasian early childhood education research developed by the Telethon Kids Institute.

Read more about the Early Childhood Education Tookit (726 KB, PDF)

Encouraging the use of evidence: workshops, resources for practitioners and tailored Toolkits

Evidence for Learning helps early childhood educators put evidence to work through workshops to support evidence-informed practice, evidence-informed resources for early childhood educators and ‘tailored’ ECE Toolkits for providers and other organisations.

Evidence for Learning is funded to run free workshops for early childhood education stakeholders and educators in Queensland. We currently offer:

• 60-90 minute workshops on the ECE Toolkit, which are usually best suited to people who make decisions about which early learning approaches to invest in (e.g. Centre Directors, educational leaders, early years stakeholders).
• 60-120 minute practical workshops for early childhood educators on the oral language strategies to promote rich conversations with two to five year olds.

A workshop using LEGO to identify the evidence in the ECE Toolkit.

Evidence for Learning commissions and shares free online evidence-informed resources for early childhood educators. In 2019, Evidence for Learning commissioned a systematic literature review and ‘tip sheets’ from the University of Queensland to give educators evidence-informed advice on ‘how’ to implement communication and language approaches in their day to day practice. These oral language resources are available to download for free from the Evidence for Learning website. In 2020, Evidence for Learning released resources for working with parents, to support parental engagement in early years education. These resources are based on Evidence for Learning’s Guidance Reports.

Evidence for Learning works with organisations to map the ECE Toolkit to their improvement frameworks. We have done this mapping for a number of organisations for our Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

We welcome feedback on our resources and suggestions for ways we can work together to help mobilise the evidence with early childhood education stakeholders. For more information on our resources, workshops and tailored Toolkits, please contact our Associate Director responsible for early childhood education, Danielle Toon.

News

• The Bryan Foundation partners with Evidence for Learning to support better learning in early childhood, 20 Mar 2019

• The State of early learning in Australia 2019. A report for the Early Learning: Everyone Benefits national campaign. Evidence for Learning is proud to be one of the partners in the development of the report alongside Early Childhood Australia and Goodstart Early Learning. 

• Educators and policy makers come together in Brisbane to discuss best practice in Early Childhood Education, 24 Feb 2020

Supporters

Our work in early childhood education is made possible by the generous support of Queensland-based philanthropy from The Bryan Foundation.