Investigating Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care
Our Members
Associate Professor Linda Harrison
BSc(Agr) (Hons) MSc McGill, DipT (EC) MCAE, MEd Syd, Phd Macq
Associate Professor Linda Harrison has significant research experience in infant/toddler child care. She has been a member of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) Consortium Advisory Group since the inception of this landmark study in 2002. Her role has been to advise on the design and implementation of the study, with a particular focus on infant child care and 4 to 5-year-old early education and care. This project is closely linked to her work as Principal Investigator with two other large longitudinal research programs - Child Care Choices, which is a 7-year study of the effects of child care arrangements for children from birth to three years of age on development and subsequent school achievement, and the Sydney Family Development Project, which is a 15-year study of families and their first-born infants' social, emotional and learning development through the toddler and preschool years, into the early and later years of primary school.
Linda is also collaborating with Dr Robyn Dolby and Associate Professor Judy Ungerer in an intervention study of child-caregiver relationships in infant/toddler and preschooler care. Relatedly, she is the expert advisor for the evaluation of the Partnerships in Early Childhood program, a child care based intervention to develop secure attachment relationships between children and their caregivers, funded under the Australian Governments' Invest to Grow Initiative.
Linda currently holds two ARC Discovery Grants ( "A multi-modal investigation of current and proposed structures and processes determining and sustaining quality in Australian centre-based child care" with Press, Sumsion, Bowes and Fenech;" Children with speech impairment: A population study of prevalence, severity, impact and service provision" with McLeod ) and an ARC Linkage Grant ( "What is life like for babies and toddlers in childcare?" with IQECEC colleagues).