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BestStart self-regulation research in ECE announced
Self-regulation research involving around 1,600 BestStart pre-schoolers could be a game-changer for education and generations of children. If successful, participant’s lives could have better life outcomes, and the programme rolled out to thousands more children.
Named Kia Tīmata Pai (meaning: to start well, safe and sound), the project will span four years, involve around 140 BestStart centres, scores of teachers and 1,600 children. The research, funded by the Wright Family Foundation, is headed by Director of the Dunedin Longitudinal study, Richie Poulton. Other key partners are the Methodist Mission Southern and ERANZ.
Clair Edgeler, BestStart National Education Leader, says that self-regulation is important in the making of positive life-choices.
“What we’re setting out to measure are the effects of supporting both oral language and self-regulation together, on a very large scale, and in real world settings.”
“A lot is known about the importance of oral language in early childhood education. We know from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study that self-regulation is key to better adult outcomes. We also know that these skills can be taught.
“The research will use self-regulation games to teach a range of emotional, cognitive (thought processing), and behavioural skills. These include delayed gratification, working memory (using memory to recall information to make decisions) and emotional regulation. An additional programme aims to enrich children’s oral language. Picture-book-reading and high-quality interactions between teachers and children are aimed at enhancing self-regulation and social and emotional skills.
“The programmes are fun and engaging,” says Clair Edgeler. “Our expectation is that children will really love being part of this.”
Both the self-regulation games and oral language enrichment programme have undergone smaller previous trials and were deemed highly effective.
‘If successful, we hope to roll out the programme to all our 260+ early learning centres. This could create positive change for generations, as well as ground-breaking changes in the way we teach’ said Clair Edgeler.
TV3’s ‘The Project’ recently aired a story about our research, you can check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/ThePr...