Cultivating Young Minds

Exploring the relationship between child socio-emotional competence, early childhood education and care quality, creativity and self-directed learning

Creativity and self-directed learning (SDL) have been identified as two key skills that children need to develop for success in the 21st century. As such, developing such skills has become a priority. High quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can play a pivotal role in supporting a myriad of children’s developmental outcomes. This study uses multi-level modeling on 484 children between 30 and 75 months of age (Mean age = 48) across 87 ECEC classrooms in Toronto. We tested associations between two skills (creativity and SDL), children’s social and emotional competence (hyperactivity, prosocial behaviour, and emotional problems) and ECEC quality (professional development, ratios and emotional support). We found significant relationships between children’s social and emotional outcomes and their creativity skills, but not their SDL. In addition, the proportion of professional development opportunities conducted onsite was positively associated with children’s creativity. Implications for future research, policy and practice are discussed.