More than 40 years ago, veteran UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) investigators Thelma Harms, PhD, and Richard M. Clifford, PhD, set out to understand what it is young children truly need to succeed. Their time-tested research and extensive observations led to the publication of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), a research-based instrument to assess the comprehensive quality of early childhood programs for children ages 3 through 5.

Since its creation at FPG in 1980, the ECERS and its subsequent versions have become highly popular measures of environmental provisions and teacher-child interactions that affect the broad developmental needs of young children. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, major research projects used the ECERS effectively to evaluate program quality, and the scale also found significant use in program improvement efforts. In 1998, FPG's Debby Cryer, PhD, joined Harms and Clifford to co-author a revised edition of the scale (the ECERS-R).

Including the ECERS, Harms, Clifford, and Cryer have developed four different Environment Rating Scales, each designed for a different segment of the early childhood field, including the Infants and Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS), Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale (FCCERS), and the School Aged Care Environment Rating Scale (SACERS). Each scale has proven reliability and validity and embodies a comprehensive perspective on child development. Over the years, the authors have offered updated or revised versions of each scale since its original publication.

And now, the ECERS baton is being passed to a new author team who will be developing the fourth edition of the ECERS. Teachers College Press recently announced that the new authors are Noreen Yazejian, PhD, Iheoma Iruka, PhD, Ximena Franco-Jenkins, PhD, and Tracy Link, MEd. They, like their groundbreaking predecessors, are leaders in the field of early childhood education research. With an extensive background in the field of early childhood development, programs and policy, as well as in-depth knowledge of how the environment rating scales are used in practice, this team brings an abundance of experience and insight to the development of the fourth edition of ECERS (ECERS-4) to further optimize early learning opportunities for all preschool and kindergarten-age children.  

“With each new edition of this assessment tool, ECERS has contributed to the improvement of early childhood care and education,” says Cryer. “The team of Noreen Yazejian, Iheoma Iruka, Ximena Franco-Jenkins, and Tracy Link will continue the important and impactful research-based work needed to ensure that ECERS-4 carries this legacy into the future.”

“With each new edition of this assessment tool, ECERS has contributed to the improvement of early childhood care and education,” says Cryer. “The team of Noreen Yazejian, Iheoma Iruka, Ximena Franco-Jenkins, and Tracy Link will continue the important and impactful research-based work needed to ensure that ECERS-4 carries this legacy into the future.”

Yazejian is a senior research scientist and interim associate director for research at FPG. Her early childhood research and program evaluation studies have focused on professional development, models of programming birth to 5, home visiting, quality rating and improvement systems, early childhood language and literacy, and the use of data for continuous quality improvement. Yazejian is an author on the third editions of ITERS and FCCERS, as well as the book, A Guide to Analyzing and Interpreting ECERS-3 Data, which was published by Teachers College Press in 2021.

Iruka is a research professor in the Department of Public Policy, an FPG faculty fellow and the founding director of FPG’s Equity Research Action Coalition. She is leading projects and initiatives focused on ensuring that minoritized children and children from low-income households thrive through the intersection of anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally grounded research, program, and policy. Iruka has authored more than 80 books and papers and has given more than 300 talks addressing systemic inequities and advancing research and action on the wellbeing of children and families.

Franco-Jenkins is a senior research scientist at FPG and the early childhood portfolio lead at the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) within FPG. Franco-Jenkins has more than 17 years of experience in life-span developmental psychology and applied research, primarily with ethnically diverse children and families within clinic, school, and community settings. Her work integrates children's socio-emotional development as well as educational and family environments. Additionally, her work is aimed at developing culturally robust assessment and intervention strategies for early care and education teachers working with multilingual learners.

Link is a managing partner and co-director of training and evaluation at the Environment Rating Scales Institute (ERSI). She has worked closely with Harms and Cryer for more than 20 years, first as a research associate at FPG, and since 2011 as a lead trainer at ERSI.

“We are excited that our colleagues will be leading the development of the next edition of ECERS,” says Clifford. “They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in early education and care ... This team will lead the way we look at environments in a diverse world.”

“We are excited that our colleagues will be leading the development of the next edition of ECERS,” says Clifford. “They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in early education and care. Noreen is already an author of both the ITERS-3 and FCCERS-3 and has led a number of research and evaluation efforts in which the ERS instruments have been used successfully. Iheoma is widely recognized as a leader in the field for her work on diversity and equity in early education. Ximena has used the current scales in her work and brings a full understanding of issues related to serving Latine populations. Tracy has led work in establishing and maintaining reliability in assessors around the world, and also brings years of experience in teaching in high quality learning environments. This team will lead the way we look at environments in a diverse world.”

Building on the work of Harms, Clifford, and Cryer, this new team of authors will conduct and incorporate new research on the broad developmental needs of young children. This new edition will be field-tested to ensure the continued reliability and validity of the instruments. ECERS-4 is due to be released in late 2026.

Teachers College Press is holding a meet the ECERS-4 authors event on January 31, 2024, at 5:00 pm ET. If you’re interested in attending this free webinar, you can register here.

And to learn more about ECERS work at FPG, check out these other articles:

• FPG researchers use focus groups to identify gaps and equity challenges in ECERS-3
• Identifying Gaps and Equity Challenges in ECERS-3
• Influential Environment Rating Scale for early childhood care turns 40
• Creators of the Environment Rating Scales Win the Innovator Award