Research

Early Ed Watch is at Head Start's 9th National Research Conference this morning, and as long as our wifi connection holds up, we'll be bringing you live coverage of what we hear and learn here. This morning's keynote session features UNC-Chapel Hill's Peg Burchinal and UVA's Robert Pianta discussing "Competencies and Credentials for Early Childhood Educators: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?" Relevant background reading here.

8:50: The Office of Head Start's Patricia Brown discusses the Office's implementation of the recent Head Start reauthorization, and the importance of research in supporting that reauthorization, in light of that legislation's emphasis on scientifically based practice.

8:53: SRCD Executive Director Lonnie Sherrod notes that this conference starts very early in the morning (there's a session at 7 AM tomorrow). Sherrod notes that Head Start, unlike many other federal programs, was created with active involvement from child development experts, establishing a unique relationship between the Head Start program and the early childhood research community.

Researchers in the Netherlands studied the impact of mental health home visitors on depressed mothers and their infants:

This study examined the effect of a mother–baby intervention on the quality of mother–child interaction, infant–mother attachment security, and infant socioemotional functioning in a group of depressed mothers with infants aged 1–12 months. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 35) receiving the intervention (8–10 home visits) with a control group (n = 36) receiving parenting support by telephone. There were assessments pre, post, and follow-up after 6 months. The intervention had positive effects on the quality of mother–infant interaction. Infants in the experimental group had higher scores for attachment security and for one aspect of socioemotional functioning, namely, competence. The intervention proved successful in preventing deterioration of the quality of mother–child interaction.

 

 

 

 

More evidence on the importance of teacher-child interactions to early education quality:

This study examined development of academic, language, and social skills among 4-year-olds in publicly supported prekindergarten (pre-K) programs in relation to 3 methods of measuring pre-K quality, which are as follows: (a) adherence to 9 standards of quality related to program infrastructure and design, (b) observations of the overall quality of classroom environments, and (c) observations of teachers’ emotional and instructional interactions with children in classrooms. Participants were 2,439 children enrolled in 671 pre-K classrooms in 11 states. Adjusting for prior skill levels, child and family characteristics, program characteristics, and state, teachers’ instructional interactions predicted academic and language skills and teachers’ emotional interactions predicted teacher-reported social skills. Findings suggest that policies, program development, and professional development efforts that improve teacher–child interactions can facilitate children’s school readiness.

Two new studies released this week aim to help policymakers make sound choices about early education investments.

In Meaningful Investments In Pre-k, researchers from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimate what it actually costs to provide quality pre-k programs. To estimate the costs of quality pre-k programs, the IWPR researchers identified the characteristics of high-quality pre-k programs—qualified teachers, small class sizes, appropriate educational materials, and so on—and arrived at research-based estimates of what it actually costs, on a per-child basis, to provide those things. They also estimated the cost of appropriate facilities and of state-level support and oversight infrastructure needed to ensure pre-k quality.

A new paper by Joseph G. Antolji, Prashant Bharadwaj, and Fabian Lange looks at whether or not American youth have responded to increasing economic rewards for skills and education by investing more in skills and education:

We examine changes in the characteristics of American youth between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, with a focus on characteristics that matter for labor market success. We reweight the NLSY79 to look like the NLSY97 along a number of dimensions that are related to labor market success, including race, gender, parental background, education, test scores, and variables that capture whether individuals transition smoothly from school to work. We then use the re-weighted sample to examine how changes in the distribution of observable skills affect employment and wages. We also use more standard regression methods to assess the labor market consequences of differences between the two cohorts. Overall, we find that the current generation is more skilled than the previous one. Blacks and Hispanics have gained relative to whites and women have gained relative to men. However, skill differences within groups have increased considerably and in aggregate the skill distribution has widened. Changes in parental education seem to generate many of the observed changes.

The rise of an assets perspective is a relatively recent phenomenon. And like any phenomenon, to understand what it is you need to describe where it came from. Researchers and scientists often go to great lengths to find the baseline.

So, what's the assets baseline? There are two ways to look at this question. One is to survey the landscape of social policy and another is to describe the current role assets play in people's lives.

Pundits and politicians frequently criticize TV, video games, computers, and music for having a negative influence on children. Various commentators have attributed a wide variety of problems—violent behavior, increasing rates of ADHD and obesity, poor educational achievement, and more—to the influence of the electronic media. So it's no wonder parents of young children are anxious about how much TV, computer, or video gaming is too much—or whether it's better to eschew electronic media completely. The spring issue of The Future of Children, a policy-oriented journal that reviews research on issues affecting children, seeks to provide some answers to parents', educators', and policymakers' questions about children and electronic media.

This article examines the extent to which family wealth affects the Black–White test score gap for young children based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (aged 3–12). This study found little evidence that wealth mediated the Black–White test scores gaps, which were eliminated when child and family demographic covariates were held constant. However, family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers and a stronger association with school-aged children’s math than on their reading scores. Liquid assets, particularly holdings in stocks or mutual funds, were positively associated with school-aged children’s test scores. Family wealth was associated with a higher quality home environment, better parenting behavior, and children’s private school attendance.

A study in the current issue of Child Development investigates how neighborhood influences affect young children's behavior and verbal abilities:

The present study used Canadian National Longitudinal data to examine a model of the mechanisms through which the effects of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions impact young children’s verbal and behavioral outcomes (N = 3,528; M age = 5.05 years, SD = 0.86). Integrating elements of social disorganization theory and family stress models, and results from structural equation models suggest that both neighborhood and family mechanisms played an important role in the transmission of neighborhood socioeconomic effects. Neighborhood disadvantage manifested its effect via lower neighborhood cohesion, which was associated with maternal depression and family dysfunction. These processes were, in turn, related to less consistent, less stimulating, and more punitive parenting behaviors, and ultimately, poorer child outcomes.