The ELRA Research Consortium will serve as an advisory body to ELRA on matters of research and evaluation, while also providing mechanisms to engage faculty and practitioners from multiple disciplines and various institutions in collaborative research and dissemination activities.    The Consortium is envisioned as a platform for researchers and practitioners with a record of outstanding achievements in the field to exchange knowledge, establish research partnerships, implement research projects, and pilot test new tools and approaches in the area of early child education and development.

The goal of the ELRA Research Consortium is to advance knowledge in the area of child (infancy through kindergarten) cognitive, socio-emotional, language and physical development while strengthening the quality of education and service, training the next generation of high-caliber researchers and practitioners, and influencing policy-making and early childhood education practices through wide dissemination of data and research findings.

The ELRA Research Consortium has the following objectives: