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Enhancing And Supporting Early Development to Better Children's Lives (EASEL) Trial

NCT05445947 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 605

Last updated 2023-12-11

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

In The Lancet's series on advancing early childhood development, provision of high-quality early childhood care and education was listed as one of the main factors that can maximize children's potential to succeed in later life, particularly children from vulnerable or disadvantaged backgrounds. High-quality early childhood care and education is widely understood to be important for equipping children with essential skills and competencies across academic and non-academic areas, which in turn increases school readiness and has long-reaching impacts on outcomes later in life. Despite the government's efforts to support the early childhood sector, educators in Singapore continue to report difficulties in implementing practices in classrooms that promote children's social, emotional and cognitive development. To enhance educators' skills in these domains, we developed the Enhancing and Supporting Early development to better children's Lives (EASEL) Approach, a set of universal educator-led practices for use with 3-6-year-old children to improve social, emotional, behavioral and executive functioning (SEB+EF) outcomes. This study will evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the EASEL Approach on improving early childhood educators' teaching practices and in turn, children's SEB+EF outcomes. We will conduct a type 2 hybrid implementation-effectiveness design in a cluster randomized controlled trial in 10-12 childcare centers. We will use the EPIS (Explore, Prepare, Implement, Sustain) Framework to support the implementation of the EASEL Approach. Implementation strategies include training, educator self-assessments, practice-based coaching, and data monitoring. Primary outcomes include educator's teaching practices and their adoption of the EASEL Approach in everyday practice. Secondary outcomes include the acceptability and feasibility of the EASEL Approach and children's SEB+EF outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected at baseline, three months and six months.

Conditions

  • Child Development

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

The EASEL (Enhancing And Supporting Early Development to Better Children's Lives) Approach

The EASEL Approach consists of a set of educator-led practices that can be incorporated into the daily classroom environment for children three to six years of age. The overall purpose of this approach is to enhance early childhood educators' teaching practices that would promote children's SEB+EF development. Nine EASEL practices were selected for inclusion in the EASEL Approach. These are a) core fundamental practices that are evidence-based, b) practices that expert stakeholders identified as ones for which local early childhood educators may need additional training, c) practices that are not already covered in pre-service training to avoid replication for educators, d) a combination of practices that educators may already be implementing and can enhance, and new practices, and e) a balance of antecedent and consequential practices (i.e., practices that can be implemented before and after a target behavior).

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Nikolaos Sevdalis, PhD · NUS Singapore

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
3 Years
Max Age
75 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-02-06
Primary Completion
2023-10-27
Completion
2023-10-27

Countries

  • Singapore

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT05445947 on ClinicalTrials.gov