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Record W4408995767 · doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2025.03.002

One size does not fit all: Associations between child characteristics, differential treatment of children by educators and quality in child care centers

2025· article· en· W4408995767 on OpenAlexafffund
Michal Perlman, Gabriella Nocita, Nina Sokolovic, Olesya Falenchuk, Jennifer M. Jenkins

Bibliographic record

VenueEarly Childhood Research Quarterly · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicEarly Childhood Education and Development
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
KeywordsChild careQuality (philosophy)Differential effectsDifferential (mechanical device)MedicineHuman factors and ergonomicsPsychologyDevelopmental psychologyPoison controlPediatricsEnvironmental healthPhysics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

High-quality interactions in early childhood education settings support children's cognitive and socioemotional development. However, little is known about what explains variability in how educators interact with different children in these settings and how this variability relates to quality metrics. This study was based on data from 470 primarily low-income, preschool-aged children (mean age = 46.6 months; 53% female) attending licensed child care settings in a multicultural metropolis. Multilevel analyses revealed that approximately 80% of both observed educator behaviors and educator reports of relationship quality varied between children in the same classrooms, and that children's disruptive behavior, verbal intelligence, and hostility accounted for anywhere between 3 and 53% of this variance. Educators directed more positivity towards children who they described as more hostile and reported having closer and less conflictual relationships with children who they described as being less hostile and having greater verbal intelligence (small to moderate effect sizes). Differential treatment was associated with child-educator ratios, staff education, and emotional climate. Results can inform research, practice, and policy related to equity, professional development, and quality measurement in early childhood education.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.005
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.036
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.040
Threshold uncertainty score0.079

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0050.036
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.002
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.033
GPT teacher head0.364
Teacher spread0.331 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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