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Practice guidelines for early childhood education (ECE) and clinical autism interventions (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention, NDBI) have emerged separately in history, represent different disciplines, and operate within different service systems in the United States. This article identifies priorities, principles, and practices that are shared across the NDBI and ECE frameworks, unique to each framework but compatible with the other, or in conflict. Both frameworks support converging inclusive ECE models focused on autism in that they are both grounded in responsive relationships, natural learning environments, and strategies to promote children's motivation and active engagement. While compatible in general, each framework extends the other in important ways. For example, NDBI goes beyond the ECE frameworks by focusing on a more fine-grained examination of learning strategies and targets. Opportunities for bridging gaps are identified, including the use of implementation science frameworks to integrate perspectives from different stakeholder groups, supporting the scale-up of inclusion preschools in community settings.

Preschool classrooms provide a unique context for supporting the development of children with social-communication challenges. This study is an uncontrolled clinical trial of an adapted professional development intervention for preschool teachers (Social Emotional Engagement-Knowledge & Skills-Early Childhood). Social Emotional Engagement-Knowledge & Skills-Early Childhood is a low-resource-intensive, transdiagnostic intervention to address the learning needs of children with social-communication challenges and consists of four asynchronous online modules and three synchronous coaching sessions. The current research evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of intervention and research procedures, implemented in authentic early childhood education settings. Participants included one teacher and one target child with social-communication challenges from 25 preschool classrooms, sampled to maximize variability. Overall, the current research revealed high levels of feasibility, with 9 out of 10 benchmarks met: (a) procedures for participant recruitment reliably identified a neurodiverse sample of children with teacher-reported social-communication challenges; (b) teachers showed high levels of program engagement and Social Emotional Engagement-Knowledge & Skills-Early Childhood completion (76%); and (c) results revealed a robust pattern of gains in Social Emotional Engagement-Knowledge & Skills-Early Childhood classrooms and associations among key outcome measures (including active engagement, student teacher relationship, social-communication competencies). Implications for the design of a subsequent, larger effectiveness-implementation hybrid trial (Type 1) are discussed.