About

Kelsey Clayback is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) at the University of Virginia. Her research centers around early childhood education, with a focus on understanding ways to promote young children’s social and emotional development and prevent challenging behavior in early childhood education settings. She also explores early childhood educator well-being and beliefs, including beliefs about children’s behavior and development. Her work involves applied research projects related to early childhood education, aiming to improve practices and outcomes in this field.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Medical education
• Nursing
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Clinical psychology
• Psychiatry
• Family medicine

Selected publications

• Using data to promote inclusion through early childhood mental health consultation

  Frontiers in Education · 2025-01-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction Early childhood educators continue to need support to build their capacity to promote positive social and emotional development and address challenging behavior when it occurs, without resorting to exclusion. One approach to improve the experiences and outcomes of young children through better support to educators is Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (ECMHC). ECMHC is an evidence-based intervention that pairs a mental health professional (i.e., “consultant”) with early childhood educators to build the capacity of providers to promote inclusion by supporting young children's social and emotional development. Methods In this paper, we describe a model of ECMHC that combines data-driven action planning and an individualized approach to build educators' capacity to implement social and emotional teaching practices with fidelity. The model begins with in-context classroom observations of child engagement and teaching practices, as well as a teacher-report of child behavior. Based on this observational baseline data, a standardized formula selects a personalized set of social and emotional teaching strategies recommended for the focus of consultation, based on the strengths and challenges of the teacher and child. Strategies included foundational strategies (e.g., fostering strong teacher-child relationships), flexible strategies (e.g., using cues and visuals), and targeted strategies (e.g., supporting problem-solving skills). Consultants and teachers then collaboratively work together to select strategies to focus on in consultation, allowing for flexibility and individualization based on individual teacher and child strengths and challenges. Results We address the following two aims: (1) examine teaching practices and children's behavior at the beginning of consultation and how these data resulted in different recommended teaching strategies, based on our standardized formula, (2) present three case examples to further illustrate how these data guided consultation to improve social and emotional teaching practices during the 2023 to 2024 school year. We found that this baseline data collection and the subsequent data-driven process for selecting strategies was feasible in that all consultants and teachers served by ECMHC were able to use it. We also found variability in baseline data and the associated ECMHC teaching strategies recommended, suggesting that the measures were sensitive to unique classroom needs and individualized recommended strategies accordingly. Discussion We discuss how this approach allowed consultants to tailor ECMHC services to the unique strengths and challenges of each child and teacher dyad, while being firmly grounded in empirical research and previously validated assessments.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supporting all learners through high quality early childhood curricula: STREAMin3 implementation across Virginia

  Frontiers in Education · 2024-12-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction Curricula are an essential component of high-quality early learning experiences. Unfortunately, many early childhood educators face challenges in accessing evidence-based curricula, and implementation fidelity to curriculum is often poor without aligned support, including professional development for educators. This is especially true for educators within family day homes and private programs, who receive the lowest pay, struggle to access meaningful support, and leave the profession at high rates, compared to publicly funded programs. Methods In this paper, we describe the STREAMin 3 birth-to-five curriculum model. We focus on describing how the curriculum model is intended to be used program-wide in infant, toddler, and preschool classroom, how the curriculum components support social, emotional, and academic skills, and how the aligned and embedded professional development model is designed to build educator capacity. We then present implementation data from the scaling of STREAMin 3 during 2022 to 2023 in over 2,000 early childhood education classroom settings in Virginia that received state or federal funding. Results We found that educators used and enjoyed the curriculum. Educators at private programs and family day homes reported higher satisfaction, compared to those at public programs and in early childhood special education settings. On average, educators reported implementing curriculum components two to three days a week. Discussion We discuss implications, including the need to support educators across settings as curricula and other initiatives are implemented at-scale across states. We discuss the need for future research to explore approaches to increase educator engagement and implementation, with attention to the unique needs of different program types.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Survey and Content Analysis of the Quality of Behavior Guidance Policies in Tennessee Early Childhood Programs

  Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2024-11-02

  articleOpen access

  Developmentally and culturally appropriate program behavior policies that are clearly communicated and implemented successfully can prevent exclusion and positively impact teachers, children, and families. However, it is unclear if policies are high quality or designed to equitably support positive behavior. We examined behavior policies from 41 child care programs in Tennessee. Using a rating tool, we found that policies were very low quality and lacked information on family engagement, staff training, and the use of data. Policies also exhibited several red flags, including using euphemisms for exclusion, using soft exclusion, and articulating three strikes or zero tolerance policies for certain child behaviors. Finally, leaders reported no formal staff training on the policy, though staff were expected to discuss policies with families. From these findings, it is clear that we need to provide more support and guidance to program leaders and other staff related to creating and implementing behavior policies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Survey and Content Analysis of the Quality of Behavior Guidance Policies in Tennessee Early Childhood Programs

  Topics in Early Childhood Special Education · 2024-07-24 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Developmentally and culturally appropriate program behavior policies that are clearly communicated and implemented successfully can prevent exclusion and positively impact teachers, children, and families. However, it is unclear if policies are high quality or designed to equitably support positive behavior. We examined behavior policies from 41 child care programs in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Using a rating tool, we found that policies were very low quality and lacked information on family engagement, staff training, and the use of data. Policies also exhibited several red flags, including using euphemisms for exclusion, using soft exclusion, and articulating three strikes or zero tolerance policies for certain child behaviors. Finally, leaders reported no formal staff training on the policy, though staff were expected to discuss policies with families. From these findings, it is clear that we need to provide more support and guidance to program leaders and other staff related to creating and implementing behavior policies.

  PublisherDOI

• A pilot study of a micro-course to promote positive teaching practices and prevent exclusionary discipline in early childhood

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2024-01-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Results from a randomized trial of the effective classroom interactions for toddler educators professional development intervention

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2023-01-01 · 6 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Implementation of an early childhood mental health consultation pilot in Virginia: Critical tensions and implications for scale-up

  Frontiers in Education · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Political Science
  • Medical education
  • Psychology

  Early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) is a targeted prevention service that aims to build the capacity of early care and education (ECE) professionals and foster supportive environments that promote children’s social–emotional competence and improve mental health and well-being. A key challenge to delivering ECMHC at scale is navigating complex multi-level factors to maximize successful implementation and program benefits at scale. The current study describes the implementation tensions arising during the first year of a pilot ECMHC program conducted in partnership across multiple agencies and a state’s department of education. In the 2021–2022 pilot year, ECMHC was offered as a free service to ECE programs in one large region of Virginia, with the goal of examining feasibility to scale statewide in future years. Consultation was implemented in 45 preschool classrooms across 30 programs. Implementation data were collected using consultation logs and participant surveys, and 20 participants (educators, families, program directors) participated in focus groups. Three implementation tensions are highlighted in this paper: (1) ideal plans versus reality of a new ECMHC roll-out; (2) how to support ECE professionals’ practice as it relates to children’s behavior, without contributing to a deficit view that children need to be “fixed;” and (3) systemic factors in the early childhood field that undermine the implementation and effectiveness of ECMHC. For each tension, we provide context from the larger literature on ECMHC, describe relevant decision points from Virginia’s pilot ECMHC program, and present implementation data to illustrate these tensions in practice. We conclude with reflections on lessons learned that have implications for other ECMHC and SEL intervention scale-up efforts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Identifying Teacher Beliefs and Experiences Associated with Curriculum Implementation Fidelity in Early Childhood Education

  Prevention Science · 2022-08-03 · 30 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Teacher and Classroom Predictors of Preschool Teacher Stress

  Early Education and Development · 2021 · 39 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Pedagogy

  Research Findings: Better understanding the correlates of teacher stress is critical to develop effective, targeted prevention and intervention efforts to decrease early childhood educator stress and ultimately improve outcomes for educators and young children. Previous studies of early childhood educator stress have mostly focused on teacher professional background and child behavior in relation to stress and rarely simultaneously considered other teacher, classroom, and center factors that may also be related to teacher stress. The current study examined multiple individual and environmental correlates of preschool teacher stress using secondary baseline data from a study of 427 teachers participating in a professional development intervention in early childhood education. Findings indicated that teacher anger, child behavior, and presence of classroom support staff were consistently related to teacher’s experience of stress in the classroom, over and above teacher’s personal and professional backgrounds. Practice or Policy: Implications for better supporting preschool teachers and young children are discussed. Taken together with previous research on teacher stress, these findings can guide future prevention and intervention work to decrease stress and promote teacher well-being in early childhood education.

  PublisherDOI

• A Multilevel Examination of the Role of Head Start Teachers in Ratings of Child Behavior

  Proceedings of the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting · 2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Amanda P. Williford

  University of Virginia

  7 shared

• Mary Louise Hemmeter

  Barton Community Health & Care Centre

  4 shared

• Jennifer LoCasale‐Crouch

  Virginia Commonwealth University

  2 shared

• Hsiu-Wen Yang

  2 shared

• Virginia E. Vitiello

  University of Virginia

  2 shared

• Erica L. Zippert

  University of Pittsburgh

  2 shared

• Erin E. Barton

  2 shared

• Bethany Rittle‐Johnson

  Vanderbilt University

  2 shared

Education

• PhD in Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science, Curry School of Education and Human Development

  University of Virginia

• M.Ed. in Child Studies (Clinical and Developmental Research), Peabody College, Psychology and Human Development

  Vanderbilt University

  2019

• BA in Psychology , Department of Psychology

  University of Dayton

  2017