Overview

How can we close opportunity gaps for young children affected by poverty and systemic racism—and build hope and resilience for children and their families? Research points the way forward, and in this timely volume, 40+ leading researchers identify new approaches, insights, and technologies that can promote educational equity and improve outcomes for children and families living in poverty. Building on the seminal work of researcher John Fantuzzo, this book focuses on identifying and expanding on child, family, and community strengths to address the urgent needs of the whole child and the whole family. The expert contributors examine the importance of 1) child-level strengths and social connections, 2) strengths-based intervention as an antidote to deficit framing, and 3) collaboration and data sharing across systems serving vulnerable children and families. Chapters cover research and recommendations for: implementing interventions that foster children’s social-emotional learning skills developing culturally and linguistically valid tools for measuring social-emotional development creating more culturally inclusive preschool classrooms and practices enhancing young children’s communication and language competence in home visiting programs using partnership-based approaches to strengthen understanding between home and school settings integrating data across programs and agencies to inform early childhood policy and better address complex social issues In addition to reporting on current research projects, the contributors outline future priorities and explore how research can inform policy and practice to achieve positive, sustainable change. A foundational volume for current and future early childhood researchers, administrators, and policy makers, this forward-thinking book will light the path toward greater educational equity, reduced disparities, and better outcomes for children and families.

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9781681257464

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Christine M. McWayne, Professor, in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University, is an applied developmental psychologist and a community-based educational researcher whose work has centered on fostering better understandings of the early social and learning successes of young children growing up in urban poverty, as well as on understanding how to better support and connect the adult contributors to children's early development—their parents and teachers. Underpinning her research with these adults are attempts to ""flip the script,"" so to speak, and create the space for practitioners and family members supporting children's development to tell us what they know, what they do, and how they do it, so that their experiential knowledge can inform our scientific knowledge base. Dr. McWayne has served as Principal Investigator (PI) on several grants, including from the National Institutes of Health, the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Brady Education Foundation. She has served as a consultant on numerous local, state, and federal working groups and expert convenings on topics such as: dual language learners' school readiness, assessment, family engagement, parenting, and Head Start programming. Dr. McWayne has also served on the editorial boards of Early Childhood Research Quarterly, the National Head Start Association’s Dialog, and as Associate Editor for the Educational Researcher, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, and Journal of School Psychology. She received her Ph.D. in School, Community and Clinical-Child Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Jason T. Downer, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the University of Virginia's Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning in Charlottesville. He is a clinical–community psychologist whose work focuses on the identification and understanding of contextual and relational contributors to young at-risk children's early achievement and social competence. Specifically, Dr. Downer is interested in the role of fathers in children's early learning, as well as the development of observational methods to capture valid, reliable estimates of teacher–child interactions in prekindergarten through elementary classrooms. Dr. Downer also has a keen interest in translating research-to-practice through school-based, classroom-focused interventions.

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