In the News
The latest news and research articles that highlights our collaborative work
Jenette Hastings
NBC 29 News
January, 2026
New early childhood education data released in Virginia show overwhelmingly strong results, with officials calling the findings good news for families across the Commonwealth. The data, which is collected through LinkB5 as part of the Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5) system, evaluates early learning programs using consistent quality standards. This gives families a clearer picture of what children experience inside classrooms.
LinkB5 was created through a partnership between the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF).
Audrey Breen
UVA Today
December, 2025
The holidays are joyful—but they can also be hectic and stressful as routines get disrupted and parents are pulled in many directions. Dr. Amanda Williford shares a simple, play-based strategy to help teachers and families reconnect with young children and strengthen positive relationships during this busy season.
Ann Partee and Ann Lhospital
CASEL Blog Post
October, 2025
Everyone has lenses through which they view and make meaning of others’ behaviors, shaping what they pay attention to, how they feel, and how they interact. In this blog post, UVA researchers Ann Partee and Ann Lhospital share a framework to help teacher become aware of these lenses. The framework aims to help teachers strengthen their own social-emotional competencies over time, so their responses to challenging behavior become more supportive and effective for children’s development.
Based on the paper: Supporting Preschool Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competencies and “Lenses” for Challenging Behavior
Audrey Breen
UVA School of Education
September, 2025
As investments in early childhood education and research expand nationwide, best practices for teachers of the littlest learners continue to grow. But when the days are full, how can these educators keep up with the newest insights to improve their skills?
A team of UVA researchers has compiled a menu of learning opportunities for early childhood educators, no matter how much time they have.
Laura Hoxworth
UVA Today
July, 2025
Whether parent, caregiver or educator, long summer days with little ones can be joyful and exhausting. Thankfully, a new source of inspiration is just a click away. Developed by education experts, the Early Childhood Education Resource Hub offers free, high-quality activities for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Learn more about this free resource and where to find it.
Ann M. Partee, Ann S. Lhospital, Sarah A. Hammond, Amanda Williford, Jason Downer
Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy
June, 2025
This paper introduces the Lenses for Children and Families tool, a practitioner-friendly framework that helps teachers better understand challenging classroom behaviors. The tool is designed to help teachers intentionally notice when they use a less helpful lens to interpret children’s behavior, and shift to a more helpful lens instead. This process draws on teachers’ social-emotional competencies, including self-awareness, emotion regulation, and perspective taking.
Kelsey Ann Clayback, Ann M. Partee, Amanda P. Williford, Jason T. Downer, Kyra Parker, Ann S. Lhospital
Frontiers in Education
January, 2025
This paper describes how one model of early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) uses data collection and data-driven action planning to individualize consultation and improve educators’ use of social and emotional teaching practices. The study presents data collected from 2023 to 2024 from 100 preschool classrooms and provides three case examples to illustrate how data guided consultation in practice.
More News
- Supporting All Learners Through High Quality Early Childhood Curricula: STREAMin3 Across Virginia - Dec. 2024
- UVA Launches Digital Portal for Early Childhood Curriculum Used Statewide - Oct. 2024
- Exclusionary Discipline for Virginia’s Youngest Learners: Evidence from the 2023 Virginia Family Survey - Sep. 2024
- Elucidating linkages of executive functioning to school readiness skill gains - Jul. 2024
- Three UVA Professors Awarded Nearly $10M From Institute for Education Sciences - Apr. 2024
- Missing Out: Kindergarten Teachers’ Reports of Soft Exclusionary Discipline Practices - Dec. 2023
- Do Classroom Interactions Matter? Patterns of Children's Readiness at School Entry - Nov. 2023
- Narrowing the Research-to-Practice Gap in Effective Professional Development in a State Preschool Program - Oct. 2023
- An Examination of Curiosity Promotion and Suppression in Preschool Math and Science Classrooms - Sep. 2023
- UVA-Built Data System Linking Virginia’s Early Childhood Care & Education Resources to Expand Statewide - Sep. 2023
- Considerations For High-Quality Pre-K Curriculum Implementation - Apr. 2023
- Building a Professional Early Childhood Workforce Requires a “Compensation-First” Approach - Apr. 2023
- Implementation of an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Pilot in Virginia - Feb. 2023
- Stability in Kindergarten Assessment Scores Could Signal Academic Recovery - Feb. 2023
- New Free Resource Hub Provides Comprehensive Tools for Early Childhood Educators - Nov. 2022
- Minding the Gap: Assessing Early Elementary Students' Development - Nov. 2022
- Kicked Out: UVA Researchers Probe Inequitable Preschool Discipline - Sep. 2022
- Education Researcher Offers 5 Tips to Smooth Children's School Transitions - Aug. 2022
- UVA Early Childhood Curriculum Will Be Made Available Statewide - Apr. 2022
- Supporting Our Youngest Generation - Mar. 2022
- Invisible Students: The Information Crisis in Early Education - Jan. 2022
- Implementation Evaluation of the STREAMin3 Curriculum Model - Dec. 2021
- Virginia Suspends Preschoolers at a High Rate. What Is the State Doing About It? - Nov. 2021
- Virginia is Changing Expectations for Child Care Providers to Put Focus on Early Education - Jun. 2021
- Tough Test: The Nation's Troubled Early Learning Assessment Landscape - Mar. 2021
- Research-Practice Partnerships Strengthen Early Education - Spring 2021
- Early Education is More Demanding than Ever, and Experts Have Concerns - Apr. 2020
- Establishing the Building Blocks of High-Quality Early Childhood Education - Jun. 2019
- Pre-School: It's Not Babysitting Anymore - Oct. 2019
- Kindergarten Assessments Begin to Shape Instruction - Oct. 2017
