Ang, Lynn;
Grenier, Julian;
Harmey, Sinead;
James, Fliss;
Prendergast, Melissa;
(2025)
Supporting early years professional development to enhance high-quality conversational interactions in early childhood care and education settings: the ShREC approach.
Early Years
10.1080/09575146.2025.2498717.
(In press).
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Abstract
This paper addresses the pertinent issue of effective evidence-based professional development (PD) to support high-quality adult-child conversational interactions in early childhood care and education settings. Research consistently shows quality adult–child interactions can improve young children’s early learning and language development. The paper discusses the evolution of the Neighbourhood Early Language Project (NELP), involving the development and implementation of an early years PD programme. NELP aimed to improve the professional knowledge and practice of early years educators in using a range of pedagogical strategies to enhance adult-child interactions. It generated a bespoke pedagogical approach, named by the acronym ‘ShREC’, which describes four key, evidence-informed pedagogical strategies: ‘Share attention, Respond, Expand and develop Conversation’. This guided educators in delivering high-quality interactions with children. This paper argues for a paradigm shift to a participatory, ‘research-to-practice’ translational approach to early years PD, making research relevant and informing the scaling-up of evidence-based practice.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Supporting early years professional development to enhance high-quality conversational interactions in early childhood care and education settings: the ShREC approach |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09575146.2025.2498717 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2025.2498717 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Early years; professional development; pedagogy; adult-child conversational interactions; early childhood care and education settings |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Learning and Leadership |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10209495 |
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