Fostering Early Competence Development Through Home and Preschool Learning Environments—a Summary of Findings from the BiKS-3-18 Study

Abstract Growing evidence reveals powerful associations between early learning environments and children’s later academic success. Besides the family, which has been shown to be a significant predictor of children’s development, the longer-term benefits of early institutional experiences in the preschool are also of interest, given the high participation rate across all social milieus, and the continuously expanding sector of early childhood education and care. In this paper, we therefore present findings from the study BiKS-3-18 on the short- and long-term effects of early learning environments at home and at preschool on children’s development.The results show that the quality of the home learning environment as well as the quality of the preschool have long term benefits for children’s socio-emotional, language, and mathematical development, although not uniformly for different developmental domains and learning environments. Thereby, the results point to the specificity of environmental impact, as different facets of the learning environments predict different domains of children’s development.