A feasibility and pilot trial of the Early Years Library

This project will develop and evaluate the Early Years Library a low-cost flexible professional development tool which aims to strengthen early childhood education.

Why this project is important

High quality early childhood education can help support children’s development and longer-term outcomes.

Despite the established positive impact of evidence-based cognitive and social-emotional intervention programmes, take-up can be limited due to high costs and limited capacity of early years professionals.

The Early Years Library

In a previous Nuffield Foundation grant, the research team sought to address this issue by identifying the common elements across multiple evidence-based early years intervention programmes, and drawing them together to create the Early Years Library.

The Early Years Library consists of freely available practitioner guides supporting developmental skills in oral language, early academic, and social-emotional skills. The guides can be used flexibly and in any order.

What this project will involve

In this project, the research team aim to strengthen the quality of early childhood education for 3-to-4-year-olds in England by supporting practitioners to use the Library.

The project will be completed in three phases:

1. Designing a package of training and support to accompany the Early Years Library to support practitioners to use the guides in their settings.
2. Evaluating whether the implementation of the Early Years Library and training and support package is feasible through rapid cycle testing.
3. Running a pilot study to determine if the Early Years Library and training and support package are implementable at a larger scale, if a future efficacy study would be feasible, and whether there is evidence that it can improve practitioner outcomes.

How the project will make a difference

Findings will be disseminated to practitioners, policymakers, training providers, and academics. Training materials, roundtable meetings, presentations, academic papers, and a public report will be used to reach different audiences. The research team will work with stakeholders to co-design, test, and refine resources to ensure outputs meet their needs.