The proposed project seeks to support a holistic, strengths-based, culturally responsive understanding of children’s learning and development using data about 4.5 years olds from the Growing Up in New Zealand study. To this end, we will advance the use of person-centred analysis techniques to identify subgroups of children with shared patterns of learning and developmental characteristics. Person-centred approaches, such as latent profile analysis, are important because they can enhance understanding of the diverse experiences within a population, how capabilities cluster together to affect functioning, and factors associated with group membership.

The project is an extension of concurrent work to explore patterns of children's social, emotional, behavioural, communication, and executive function capabilities. Itt will use latent profile analysis to distinguish subgroups of children (4.5yrs) with shared patterns of social, emotional, language, literacy, numeracy, and physical capabilities. The research will include a specific focus on analysis techniques for exploring measurement invariance across gender and ethnicity groups to ensure culturally responsive and appropriate interpretation of findings.

The overarching aim of the project is to demonstrate the value of a person-centred analysis of children’s learning and development data, underpinned by the principles of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, to increase the utility of such data for informing early childhood education policy. Findings from the model will provide new information about young children’s learning and development from a holistic perspective. A further objective of the project is to strengthen and support translational quantitative research capacity and the use of data within early childhood education in Aotearoa.