As we approach our third year of a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, it has become clear that the world as we knew it is gone. Much of what we knew, and much of what we did, has been replaced by scientifically driven public health protocols and revolutionary new vaccines that have yet to be universally accepted. The future of the virus, and the aftermath of its effects, is not known, so we continue to live with ambiguity at best and chronic anxiety at worst. And yet, our lives go on, as do the lives of infants and young children with disabilities and their families.
All sectors of society have been transformed by the virus. Early childhood intervention has reinvented service delivery to include whole class, small group, and individual interventions through online technologies. This has worked in some instances, and not in others, and with some children and families, and not with others. These variations in service delivery have provided information about the feasibility and effectiveness of remotely delivered early childhood intervention under prescribed conditions (e.g., family involvement in assessment; use of home and community routines and activities to expand intervention targets). Examining what we have learned over these two and a half years provides opportunities to expand intervention methodologies and practices to facilitate learning and development in infants and young children and their families.
As a field, we have much to share with each other about how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped our own perception of the importance and value of early childhood intervention: as we knew it prior to 2020; and now as we approach 2022. Unfortunately, the pandemic has limited our opportunities to do this in person. However, through a leap of faith that the virus will abate during its third year, and the continued guidance of science, I am pleased to announce that we will have a chance to revisit, revitalize, and reaffirm our collective commitment to infants, young children, and their families at the Seventh International Conference of the International Society of Early Intervention (ISEI), which will be held in person in Chicago, IL, on September 27-30, 2022. We will celebrate where we have been, and where we are going, as we plan the future of service delivery, mindful of the many lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our conference theme is Integrating Research and Practice in Early Childhood Intervention.
The 2022 ISEI conference will be held in conjunction with the 2022 Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Council for Exceptional Children annual conference. The two conferences will be parallel, but coordinated across keynotes, symposia, and posters. Although we are planning for these conferences to be in person at this time, please be assured a hybrid conference will occur should that be necessary because of continuing public health concerns.
ISEI members are encouraged to submit abstracts for review through the ISEI portal on our website at https://sites.uw.edu/isei/. Similarly, DEC members are encouraged to submit abstracts on the DEC site at https://www.dec-sped.org/. Different information is requested by each organization, and the submission formats also differ, as described on each submission portal. Authors can submit abstracts to both ISEI and DEC, but the content must be different. Presenting authors are limited to two total sessions (Individual Paper, Symposium) across ISEI and DEC, though there is no limit for poster submissions. Submission portals will open on January 1, 2022, and more information about the peer-review process for the abstracts will also be on the portal.
CURRENT ISSUE
Our first article, by Batya Elbaum and Seniz Celimli-Aksoy, examines the developmental progress and outcomes of nine subgroups of children receiving early intervention. The subgroups were created using children's medical diagnosis or area of developmental delay. The children's developmental status both pre- and post-early intervention was measured by developmental assessments and multivariate analyses of developmental domain scores. The analyses confirmed the need to use more precise measurements of children's developmental trajectories to determine accurate growth as a result of participating in early intervention services.
Our next article by Courtney Zulauf-McCurdy and Katherine Zinsser illuminates an area of crises for the early childhood field: Far too many children are being removed from early childhood programs through expulsions. Parents, and teachers who had a child in their program who was previously expelled were interviewed to identify factors that contributed or inhibited expulsion. These interviews suggested that transparent and open communication between home and school served as a protective factor that prevented expulsions. The authors recommend interventions to promote high-quality parent-teacher relationships with all children to reduce the incidence of preschool expulsion.
Our third article, authored by Susan Davis-Strauss, Ensa Johnson, and Welma Lubbe, is about a study that explored the information and support needs of South African parents with premature infants who were discharged home from the hospital. Focus groups on Facebook were used to identify the needs of 25 parents, and these caregiving needs were used to inform a parent support program. The authors concluded that South African parents have unfulfilled information and support needs about their premature infants and their own overall well-being.
Our next article by Grace Kelso Damond focuses on congenital heart disease (CHD) in children. Although advances in medical care have resulted in high survival rates for infants born with CHD, neurodevelopmental risks continue to affect them as they grow and develop. The author provides an overview of the evidence for providing developmentally supportive care for infants in the hospital after surgery, and further suggests early intervention strategies. Finally, the author recommends training and education resources for interprofessional hospital staff to help them provide supportive care for infants with CHD.
Finally, Andrea Ford, Maria Hugh, LeAnne Johnson, and Kelsey Young provide a conceptual article about the measurement of process quality in early childhood education programs. The authors propose the addition of specific evidence-based adult interaction elements to the global measures of classroom ecology that are currently in use. These elements include adult-led interaction practices, child-led interaction practices, and differentiated scaffolding. The authors conclude with implications for future practice and policies to support these elements of quality classroom ecology.
In closing, I thank the authors for submitting their work to Infants & Young Children and the reviewers who assisted the editorial process by offering salient suggestions to bring these manuscripts to publication. We have provided an issue with international authorship and new authors. I look forward to seeing you in Chicago. We have much to learn from each other about survival, resilience, and advances in our field!
-Mary Beth Bruder, PhD
Editor