In the era of evidence-based policy and practice, most governments aim to regulate funding and program features to ensure quality early childhood education (ECE) experiences for every child. In China, the field of ECE has undertaken a promising transformation to meet multiple national reform goal of providing a three-year quality ECE to 48 million of age-qualifying children by 2020 (Hu & Li, 2012). Specifically, the government has outlined a national blueprint to develop an accessible, affordable, sustainable and accountable ECE system, linking to improved program quality and child outcomes, following the principles of social justice. To realize social justice, the stakeholders must make sure children of low socioeconomic status (SES) enroll in programs of adequate quality, so that they can catch up with their socioeconomically advantaged counterparts in terms of early and later academic achievements and lifelong success.

In order to achievement aforementioned goals, stakeholders must systematically address the following questions. First, what constitutes a quality ECE in Chinese contexts and how to measure it? Quality is a complex and multifaceted concept and it must be defined within one's own socioeconomic, cultural, and policy contexts. Tools that can effectively measure quality need to be developed and validated for Chinese ECE contexts.

 

Second, how to make sure that every child can access to programs of adequate quality? Threshold analysis of the effects of classroom quality on child outcomes can detect the point, above or below which, the impact of classroom quality on child outcomes will either be strengthened or weakened or even disappear (Mashburn et al., 2008). Findings from such analysis have implications for accountability measures of public investments, i.e., fiscal input provided by the policy should be accountable to the government for quality assurance.

 

Last but not least, what is the minimum level of public funding for ECE program quality assurance? Due to an ill-structured cost-sharing mechanism, most fiscal funding support public programs serving children from high SES families while low SES parents struggle with affordability. As the public funding for low SES families increase, the stakeholders need to determine an effective funding mechanism (e.g., per-child funding, bianzhi-based funding project-based funding) in order to increase affordability of low SES parents accessing high-quality ECE while ensuring an adequate level of program quality.

 

On-going Research Projects

 

The effects of early childhood policy reform on Chinese children's school readiness skills

 

The impact of early childhood funding system on child outcomes: The mediating role of classroom quality

 

How to provide policy support to enhance academic and socio-emotional skills of children of migrant families

 

Recruiting and retaining effective early childhood teachers

 

Policies to support the improvement of teacher effectiveness

 

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