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The first and only comprehensive review of current early childhood development theory, practices, policies, and the science behind them This unique and important bookprovides a comprehensive overview of the current theory, practices, and policies in early childhood development withinthe contexts of family, school, and community, and society at large. Moreover, it synthesizes scientifically rigorous research from an array of disciplines in an effort to identify the most effective strategies for promoting early childhood development. Research into childhood development is booming, and the scientific knowledge base concerning early childhood development is now greater than that of any other stage of the human life span. At the same time, efforts to apply that knowledge to early childhood practices, programs, and policies have never been greater or more urgent. Yet, surprisingly, until The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies, there was no comprehensive, critical review of the applied science in the field. The book begins with in-depth coverage of child and family approaches. From there it moves onto a consideration of school- and community-based strategies. It concludes with a discussion of current social policies on health and development in early childhood and their implications. * Provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the knowledge base, along with guidance for the future of the field * Examines the underlying theory and basic science guiding efforts to promote early childhood development * Critically reviews the strength of the empirical support for individual practices, programs, and policies * Explores key opportunities and barriers policymakers and practitioners face when implementing various approaches * Pays particular attention to socioeconomically disadvantaged and other disenfranchised populations The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies is a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students across the social sciences who are interested in strengthening their understanding of current strategies for promoting early childhood development and the science informing those strategies.
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Cover
Title Page
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Preface
References
PART I:
The State of Young Children in the United States
CHAPTER ONE:
The State of Young Children in the United States
School Readiness in the United States in the 21st Century
Measuring School Readiness in a Policy Context
References
CHAPTER TWO:
The State of Young Children in the United States
Dimensions and Categories of Problem Behaviors in Young Children
Summary and Implications for Social Policy – Prevention and Early Intervention
References
CHAPTER THREE:
Early Childhood Health Disparities, Biological Embedding, and Life-Course Health
Health Disparities in Early Childhood
Early Adversity and Long-Term Health: Empirical Findings
Early Adversity and Long-Term Health: (Some) Biological Mechanisms
Evolution, “Fetal Origins,” and Pre-/Perinatal Stress
Poverty and Stress in Early Childhood
Stress, Inflammation, and Health in Early Childhood
Epigenetic Mechanisms of Early Adversity and Life-Course Health
Emerging Developmental Evidence from Non-Human Animal Studies
Emerging Developmental Evidence from Human Studies
Putting the Pieces Together
Does Any of This Matter for Early Childhood Policy?
References
CHAPTER FOUR:
Social and Contextual Risks
Complex Creatures Living in a Complex World
Risk Conditions and Child Well-Being
Caregiving Pathways by Which Adverse Distal Conditions Undermine Children’s Well-Being
Conclusions
References
PART II:
Theoretical and Empirical Contexts of Applied Developmental Science of Early Childhood
CHAPTER FIVE:
From the Lab to the Contexts in which Children Live and Grow
Introduction
From the Lab to the Field
The Study of Context
The
Bio
ecological Model
Proximal Processes
The Transforming Experiment
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER SIX:
What Does it Mean to be Evidence-based?
Contemporary and Historical Context of Prioritizing Evidence-based Programs, Practices, and Policies
Definitions of Evidence-Based
Example of EBP Implemented in Early Childhood – Boston Pre-kindergarten
Moving Forward: Translating Evidence to Policy and Practice
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Neural Development in Context
Normative Patterns of Brain Development
Theoretical Framework Linking Early Experience with Brain Development
Differences in Neural Structure Associated with Adverse Childhood Experiences
Differences in Neural Function Associated with Adverse Childhood Experiences
Explaining Differences in Academic Achievement and Mental Health Outcomes
Mechanisms Linking Adverse Childhood Experiences and Neural Development
Developmental Timing of Adversity
Leveraging Neuroimaging Tools in Prevention and Intervention Research
Conclusion
References
PART III:
Early Childhood Education and Care
CHAPTER EIGHT:
Publicly Supported Early Care and Education Programs
Introduction
Theoretical Foundations of Pre-k Research
Empirical Evidence
Cost-Benefit Analyses
Pre-K Policy Landscape in the US
Conclusions
Empirical Progress Chart
References
CHAPTER NINE:
Early Childhood Education and Care for Dual Language Learners
A Portrait of Young DLLs
Developmental and Language Learning Theories
Early Childhood Landscape and Programs
Cross Program Themes: Considering DLLs
Research and Policy: Discord and Dissonance
References
CHAPTER TEN:
Early Childhood Education and Care for Children with Disabilities
Theoretical Models
Characteristics of Children with Disabilities Receiving Special Services
The Effectiveness of Early Childhood Education and Care Services for Children with Disabilities
Transition from One Service System to Another
The Effectiveness of Early Childhood Special Education
Future Directions
Big Issues, Broad Policies, Mixed Effects
References
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
Classroom-based Early Childhood Interventions
Introduction
Major Theories and Principles Guiding the Design of Classroom-Based Interventions
The State of the Evidence on Classroom-Based Early Childhood Interventions
Organizing Approaches to Classroom-Based Early Childhood Interventions
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER TWELVE:
Child Care and Child Development in the United States
What
Is
Child Care? Background and Key Terms
Who
Uses
Child Care? Patterns and Predictors of Child Care Experiences
What Do Child Care Users Get? Key Features of Care Experiences
Child Care and Child Development
Looking Ahead: Current and Future Directions for Child Care Research
References
PART IV:
Parenting, Family, and Dual-generation Programs
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
Family-School Partnerships in Early Childhood
Introduction
Theoretical Underpinnings of Partnerships in Early Childhood
Empirical Support for Family-School Partnerships in Early Childhood
Opportunities and Barriers to Family-School Partnerships in Early Childhood Policy
Summary and Conclusions
Acknowledgement
References
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
Parenting and Home Visiting Interventions
Theoretical Basis for Parenting Programs
How Strong is the Empirical Support?
Summary of Evidence on Parenting Programs
Implications for Public Policy and Future Directions
References
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
The Two-Generation Approach to Building Human Capital: Past, Present, and Future
Parents’ Educational Attainment and Children’s Outcomes
Barriers to Educational Gains among Low-Income Parents
Two-Generation Programs 1.0
Two-Generation Programs 2.0
Conclusions and Future Directions
References
PART V:
Public Policy and Young Children
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
Immigration Policy and Early Childhood Development
Introduction: The State of Young Children in Immigrant Families
Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Citizenship Policies
Deportation and Enforcement Policies
Immigrant-Population Welcome Policies
Immigration Policies for Refugees and Asylees
Early Education and Health Care Access Policies
Conclusion and Future Directions
References
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
Marriage Policy and Early Childhood Development
Trends in Marriage in the US
Close Connections Between Nonmarital Childbearing and Limited Resources
The Importance of Parental Marriage for Early Childhood Development
Policies and Programs to Promote Healthy Marriages or to Decrease Nonmarital Childbearing
Evidence of Healthy Marriage Promotion Effectiveness
Key Challenges and Future Directions for Marriage Policy
Summary
References
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Child Welfare Policy
Chapter Overview
Introduction
Developmental Outcomes Associated with Child Maltreatment
Theoretical Underpinnings of Child Welfare Policy
Evaluating Child Welfare Policy: Empirical Evidence
Key Opportunities and Barriers to Implementation
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER NINETEEN:
Effects of United States Income and Work Supports Policies on Children in Low-Income Families
Theory and Developmental Science
Evidence for Policy Effects
Conclusions
References
CHAPTER TWENTY:
The Role of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs in Promoting Early Childhood Development in the United States
Introduction
Theory and Rationale for Conditional Cash Transfers
Poverty, Family Dynamics, and Young Children’s Development
Targeting “Mechanisms of Action”
Understanding Variation in Program Effects: Individual- and Setting-level Characteristics
Evidence from Current and Past CCTs in Low and Middle-Income Countries
Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards: A New Generation of CCTs in the US
A Need for Experimentation
Looking Forward to the Future of CCTs in the United States
Conclusions
Challenges and Constraints
Opportunities
Future Research
References
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
Work-Family Policies
Work-Family Policies: Policy Development and Impact
Summary and Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Chapter 08
Table 8.1 Empirical progress chart for public pre-K
Chapter 09
Table 9.1 Empirical progress chart for major themes in DLL research
Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of effects of early intervention and special education for young children with disabilities
Chapter 11
Table 11.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of classroom-based early childhood interventions
Chapter 12
Table 12.1 Empirical progress chart
Chapter 13
Table 13.1 Summary of empirical studies investigating family-school partnerships in early childhood
Table 13.2 Empirical progress chart for studies of family-school partnerships (FSPs) in early childhood
Chapter 14
Table 14.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of parenting and home visiting interventions
Chapter 15
Table 15.1 Summary of Generation 2.0 two-generation human capital-building programs
Chapter 17
Table 17.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of marriage effects on child development and policy efforts to affect marital and childbearing behaviors
Chapter 18
Table 18.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of child welfare policies, programs, and practices
Chapter 19
Table 19.1 Empirical progress chart
Table 19.2 Child care subsidies
Table 19.3 Food programs
Chapter 20
Table 20.1 Empirical progress chart for conditional cash transfer program consequences for parent and child outcomes
Chapter 21
Table 21.1 Empirical progress chart for studies of family support and work-family policies on family and child outcomes
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1 Model illustrates the hypothesized dynamic and mutually beneficial effects of two-generation program inputs on parent and child human capital and outcomes. An arrow pointing to an arrow represents an enhancing effect (e.g., greater parent human capital enhances the effect of early childhood education on child human capital).
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1 Conceptual model of the effects of a conditional cash transfer program on young children’s development.
Chapter 21
Figure 21.1 Timeline: progression of work-family policies.
Figure 21.2 Conceptual model: pathways for work-family policy impacts on child outcomes.
Cover
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The Wiley Handbooks of Developmental Psychology
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The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and PoliciesEdited by Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal and Eric Dearing
The Wiley Handbook of Group Processes in Children and AdolescentsEdited by Adam Rutland, Drew Nesdale, and Christia Spears Brown
Edited by Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal and Eric Dearing
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Names: Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth.Title: The Wiley handbook of early childhood development programs, practices, and policies / edited by Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal and Eric Dearing.Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016041895| ISBN 9781118937297 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118937327 (epub) | ISBN 9781118937310 (ePDF)Subjects: LCSH: Early childhood education.Classification: LCC LB1139.23 .H36 2017 | DDC 372.21–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041895
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J. Lawrence Aber, Ph.D., is the Willner Family Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and University Professor at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical-Community and Developmental Psychology from Yale University. His basic research examines the influence of poverty and violence, at the family and community levels, on the social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and academic development of children and youth. Currently, he conducts research on the impact of poverty and HIV/AIDS on children’s development in South Africa (in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council), the impact of preschool teacher training quality and children’s learning and development in Ghana (in collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action) and on school- and community-based interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon (in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee).
W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D., is Board of Governors Professor of Education and Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. His research includes wide-ranging studies on early childhood policy and economics including: research on long-term effects of early education programs; benefit-cost analyses of early childhood programs; educating bilingual/migrant populations; the effects of curriculum on executive functions, attitudes, and social behavior; and the series of State Preschool Yearbooks providing annual state-by-state analyses of progress in public pre-k. Dr. Barnett published a benefit-cost analysis of lifetime effects of the Perry Preschool in 1985 based on adult follow-up finding a $7 to $1 return. Nearly 30 years later he summarized what has been learned about producing such results on a large scale in the journal Science. Dr. Barnett earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
Juliette Berg, Ph.D., is a researcher at American Institutes for Research. Dr. Berg has extensive experience conducting applied child development research in a variety of settings, including K–12 schools and urban communities, and for several countries including the United States, France, South Africa, and India. Dr. Berg has collaborated on several large-scale randomized control trials of social and emotional learning, instructional improvement, and school climate interventions in K–12 schools, and a conditional cash transfer program in New York City. She has methodological expertise in research design, program evaluation, implementation science, and advanced quantitative methods, and content expertise in social and emotional learning and school climate. Dr. Berg earned her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from New York University. She completed her post-doctoral work at the University of Virginia.
Daniel Berry is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. His research is concerned with the bioecology of children’s self-regulation development across early and middle childhood – in particular, the developmental dynamics underlying early experience, self-regulation, and the organization of children’s physiological stress systems.
Kristen Bottema-Beutel is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in The Lynch School of Education at Boston College. She received her Ph.D. from the joint doctoral program in special education at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Following her graduate work, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in special education at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Bottema-Beutel’s areas of research include social interaction dynamics in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), educational interventions to promote peer interaction and social development in children with ASDs, social-communication development, and decision-making processes regarding peer inclusion in social contexts.
Robert H. Bradley, Ph.D., is Director of the Family and Human Dynamics Research Institute at ASU. He is a member of the HHS/HRSA Advisory Committee on Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visitation Program Evaluation and on the editorial boards of Parenting: Science and Practice, Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly and was associate editor for both Child Development and Early Childhood Research Quarterly. He has more than 350 publications dealing with parenting, early education, fathers, child care, and the relation between home environments and children’s health and development. Dr. Bradley is one of the developers of the HOME Inventory.
Dr. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor Child Development at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. She is also the co-director of the National Center for Children and Families (www.policyforchildren.org). Dr. Brooks-Gunn is a developmental psychologist who studies children, youth, and families over time. She is interested in the family and neighborhood conditions that influence how children and youth thrive, or do not, and how conditions at different ages influence development. She also does policy work as well as designing and evaluating interventions for children and families (home visiting clinic-based programs, early childhood education programs, and after school programs).
Margaret R. Burchinal, Ph.D., Senior Scientist and Director of the Data Management and Analysis Core at the FPG Child Development Institute and Research Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Burchinal has extensive experience in managing the data management and statistical analyses for large multi-site studies, serving as the lead statistician for projects such as the NIH Family Life Project, NICHD Study of Early Care and Youth Development, the IES National Center for Early Development and Learning, and for center grants and program projects funded by NIA, NIDA, NICHD, and IES. Her research interests include growth curve methodology and the short- and long-term impacts of early care and education, especially for children at risk due to poverty. She has authored over 150 peer-reviewed papers and several chapters, including the most recent chapter on early care and education in the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science. She has served as: an associate editor for Child Development and Early Childhood Research Quarterly; a panel member of grant review committees for MCH, IES, and NICHD; a member for several National Research Council committees and several Head Start research and evaluation committees; and is currently a trustee for the W.T. Grant Foundation.
Dr. Susan B. Campbell is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her earlier research focused on emerging behavior problems in young children emphasizing child, parenting, and family risk factors, including maternal depression, that predict the onset and persistence of adjustment difficulties. Dr. Campbell was the PI at the Pittsburgh Site of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development from 1995 through 2009 and co-PI when the study began in 1990. She is currently completing a study on the social development of toddlers at genetic risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Her work has appeared in leading developmental and clinical child journals and she is the author of Behavior Problems in Preschool Children: Clinical and Developmental Issues (Guilford, 2002). Dr. Campbell is a Past President of the Section on Clinical Child Psychology (now Division 53) of the American Psychological Association and a founding member and the first secretary of the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. From 1998 until 2005 Campbell was the editor of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology; she continues to serve on several editorial boards.
Megan E. Carolan is the Associate Director for Policy Research at the Institute for Child Success, where she helps direct research on early childhood policy as well as supporting its technical assistance for Pay for Success jurisdictions. Megan was previously the Policy Research Coordinator at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, where she managed the State Preschool Yearbook, NIEER’s annual report on state-funded pre-k policy. She also provided technical assistance to states through the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes, a federally funded technical assistance center focused on improving outcomes for children from birth to age 8. Megan holds a Master of Public Policy from the Edward J. Bloustein School at Rutgers University, and graduated magna cum laude from Fairfield University, majoring in sociology and politics.
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale is the Frances Willard Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at the School of Education and Social Policy, a Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), and Associate Provost for Faculty, Northwestern University. Much of her work addresses family strengths as well as programs and policies that lead to children's positive social and educational outcomes in the context of economic hardship. Chase-Lansdale is an elected member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and of the National Academy of Education, a fellow in the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Aspen Institute’s Ascend Program, Two-Generations, One Future. She is the recipient of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children as well as the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) Social Policy Award.
Rebekah Levine Coley, Ph.D., is a Professor of Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College's Lynch School of Education. Coley’s research seeks to delineate the key family, school, and community processes which transmit economic and social inequality to children’s development from infancy through adolescence. Her work seeks to connect rigorous developmental science research to practice and policy at the local, state, and federal level. Professor Coley’s research has been published in dozens of leading journals and edited volumes, and has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Australian Research Council, and numerous private foundations. She holds leadership positions in the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Research on Adolescence, the Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium, and the University-based Child and Family Policy Consortium. Her research excellence has been recognized through receipt of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award and a Social Policy Award from the Society for Research in Adolescence.
Maia C. Connors is Senior Research Associate, Research & Policy Initiatives at the Ounce of Prevention Fund. Her research focuses on early childhood care and education policy, systems’ support of high quality early education and professional learning, and adults' support of young children's development. Dr. Connors draws on interdisciplinary theory and rigorous quantitative methods to answer pragmatic research questions and translate findings into policy and practice. Her recent work has explored sources of variation in the impacts of Head Start; identified promising policy levers for improving preschool quality at scale; and informed the decisions of city and state departments of education regarding early childhood school accountability, expansion, and improvement. Dr. Connors received an A.B. in Sociology and Education Studies from Brown University, and Ph.D. in Applied Psychology from New York University.
Eric Dearing is a Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development. He is also a fellow in the Center for Optimized Student Support at Boston College. Eric received his PhD in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire in 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he completed postdoctoral training in clinical research at Harvard University. Eric’s work is focused on the consequences of children’s lives outside of school for their performance in school, with special attention to the power of families, early education and care, and neighborhood supports to bolster achievement for children growing up poor. Presently, as a member of the Development and Research in Early Math Learning (DREME) Network being funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation, much of his research is focused on the roles of parents and early educators in low-income children’s math learning.
Nina E. Forestieri, is a research analyst at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Forestieri has a master’s degree in Maternal and Child Health from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has experience working on complex analyses with numerous early childhood data sets on studies funded by NICHD, IES, and MCHB. Her research interests include risk and protective factors associated with developmental outcomes among diverse populations, and family and caregiver characteristics contributing to development throughout childhood.
Dr. Margo Gardner is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology at Temple University, and her B.A. in psychology at Duquesne University. Dr. Gardner’s work is aimed at exploring child and youth development in low-income and otherwise at-risk populations. Her past research has focused on adolescent risk-taking, the development of juvenile offending, and the consequences of youths’ exposure to neighborhood and family violence. Currently, Dr. Gardner is working on projects related to young adult development, postsecondary access and credentialing, and postsecondary gains among low-income mothers of young children.
Anna Gassman-Pines is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Psychology and Neuroscience at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a Faculty Fellow of Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy. Gassman-Pines received her B.A. with distinction in psychology from Yale University, where she was an Affiliate of the Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy, and her PhD in Community and Developmental Psychology from New York University. Her research focuses on the effects of low-wage work and anti-poverty policies on low-income children and families’ well-being. She has received awards for both research and teaching, including a Changing Faces of American Young Scholars Award from Foundation for Child Development and the Sanford School of Public Policy’s Richard A. Stubbing Teacher Mentor Award. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and the American Psychological Foundation.
Rachel Goldstein is a Federal Healthcare Consultant with Deloitte Consulting LLP, based out of Washington, DC. She currently works on identifying clinical data sharing needs for electronic health record interoperability between two major Federal Departments. Rachel has a Master of Public Policy degree, with a concentration in Health Care Policy, from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a B.A. from University of California – Davis.
Penny Hauser-Cram is Professor of Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. She has written extensively on services for young children with developmental disabilities. Her current research focuses on longitudinal studies of children with developmental disabilities. In particular, she investigates the ways that the family, social services, and educational systems support children’s development and learning.
Lauren Hay is currently a client coach at Joyable. Prior to that, she worked in several research labs focusing on mindset, emotion regulation, the neural bases of autism spectrum disorder, mental health issues in incarcerated populations, and social and emotional learning in youth. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology and Psychology and from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with an Ed.M. in Mind, Brain, and Education.
Miriam Heyman is a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Her research focuses on factors that promote positive development of executive function and social skills, both for typically developing children and for children with developmental disabilities. Miriam earned her doctorate in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology from the Boston College Lynch School of Education.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Miriam worked as a special education elementary school teacher in the New York City Public Schools. She earned her master’s degree in special education from the City University of New York, and her master’s degree in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology from Boston College.
Aletha C. Huston is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor Emerita of Child Development at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in understanding the effects of poverty on children and the impact of child care and income support policies on children's development. Her books include Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and their Children (2007) (with Duncan and Weisner), Developmental Contexts of Middle Childhood: Bridges to Adolescence and Adulthood (2006), and Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy (1991). She is Past President of the Society for Research in Child Development, the Developmental Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, and the Consortium of Social Science Associations, and the recipient of the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contributions to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.
Anna D. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Georgetown University. Dr. Johnson’s primary research focus has been on the potential of publicly funded early childhood education and care programs to reduce school readiness gaps between low-income children and their more advantaged peers. To this end, she has extensively studied the use of the federal child care subsidy program and its effects on child care quality, type, and child development. In additional lines of work, Dr. Johnson is investigating associations between other threats to child well-being, including food insecurity and maternal depression, and child and family outcomes. She is also extending her research on predictors and consequences of child care subsidy receipt to explore participation in and effects of public food assistance programs. Dr. Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology (with distinction) and a Masters in Public Administration, both from Columbia University.
Stephanie Jones is the Marie and Max Kargman Associate Professor in Human Development and Urban Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research, anchored in prevention science, focuses on the effects of poverty and exposure to violence on children and youth's social, emotional, and behavioral development. Specifically, her work focuses on the causes and consequences of social-emotional problems and competencies; strategies for altering the pathways that shape children's social-emotional development; and programs, interventions, and pedagogy that foster social-emotional competencies among children, adults, and environments. Over the last 10 years her work has included both evaluation research addressing the impact of preschool and elementary focused social-emotional learning interventions on child and classroom outcomes; as well as new curriculum development, implementation, and testing. Jones is a recipient of the Grawemeyer Award in Education for her work on A Vision for Universal Preschool Education (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the Joseph E. Zins Early-Career Distinguished Contribution Award for Action Research in Social and Emotional Learning.
Lisa L. Knoche is a Research Associate Professor and Director of the Nebraska Early Childhood Research Academy in the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Dr. Knoche is an applied developmental psychologist with expertise in the design, development, and evaluation of early childhood intervention and prevention programs to support both healthy development in young children and family engagement in early learning. Dr. Knoche is particularly experienced in issues of implementation science, including measurement of fidelity across systemic levels, and she is interested in identifying and supporting effective professional development strategies for early childhood professionals. She has extensive experience in implementing collaborative research programs with community partners. Dr. Knoche has authored publications to advance understanding of issues relevant to young children and families and has provided numerous local, national, and international presentations to advance early childhood science, and improve practice and policy.
Nancy Donelan-McCall, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado, and Director of the DANCE (Dyadic Assessment of Naturalistic Caregiver-child Experiences) program. She has over 25 years’ experience working to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families through research and applied practice. She has spent the past 10 years conducting programmatic quality improvement initiatives for the Nurse-Family Partnership® with the goal of improving the tools and resources nurse home visitors use to support caregiving for low-income, first-time mothers. She teaches courses on early childhood development, intervention, and observational measures as well as developed courses for early childhood educators on child development and the importance of early caregiver-child relationships.
Kathleen McCartney received her Ph.D. from Yale University in developmental psychology in 1982. Her research focuses on childcare and early childhood experience, education policy, and parenting. She has authored more than 150 articles and book chapters and was a principal researcher for a 20-year study of the effects of child care on child development funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. In 2009, she was the recipient of the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. Currently, she is the president of Smith College.
Dana Charles McCoy is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work focuses on understanding the ways that poverty-related risk factors in children's home, school, and neighborhood environments affect the development of their cognitive and socioemotional skills in early childhood. She is also interested in the development, refinement, and evaluation of early intervention programs designed to promote positive development and resilience in young children, particularly in terms of their self-regulation and executive function. Before joining the HGSE faculty, Dr. McCoy served as an NICHD National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. She graduated with an A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College and received her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology from New York University.
Emily C. Merz is a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training program at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. Her research uses multiple levels of analysis to investigate the effects of early contextual risk and parental care on the development of top-down control processes and the prefrontal cortex during childhood.
Amanda L. Moen is a doctoral candidate in School Psychology and a graduate research assistant in the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She is interested in family engagement in early childhood and the promotion positive outcomes for young children and their families. In particular, Ms. Moen is interested in understanding classroom, teacher, and administrative factors that may play a role in effective partnership between the teachers and parents of young children. Ms. Moen has co-authored publications related to family-school partnership, and has a number of regional and national presentations that inform the family engagement literature in early childhood.
Pamela A. Morris is a Professor of Applied Psychology and the Vice Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Morris’s work lies at the intersection of social policy and developmental psychology. Examples of her current research include a study of income volatility, large-scale randomized experiments of enhancements to preschool, work with NYC’s Department of Education and the Mayor’s office to strengthen the research architecture in the context of NYCs historic expansion of Universal Pre-K, and the study of an integrated primary/secondary parenting intervention within the population-scalable pediatric care platform. A former William T. Grant scholar, Morris currently serves as a lead editor of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and has served on a number of boards and review groups, including the National Academy of Science’s Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the Institute of Education Sciences’ Early Intervention and Early Childhood Education Panel.
Kimberly G. Noble, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Trained as a cognitive neuroscientist and pediatrician, she studies socio-economic disparities in children’s cognitive and brain development. Her work examines both brain structure and function across infancy, childhood, and adolescence. She is particularly interested in understanding how early in childhood such disparities develop, the modifiable environmental differences that account for these disparities, and the ways we might harness this research to inform the design of interventions.
Dr. Mariela Páez is an Associate Professor at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. She has a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Her primary research interests include bilingualism, children's language and early literacy development, and early childhood education. Dr. Páez has conducted several longitudinal studies with young bilingual children with funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office for Educational Research and Improvement, Department of Education. She is author of numerous articles and co-editor of Latinos: Remaking America (with Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, 2008).
Soojin Oh Park is an Assistant Professor in Early Childhood and Family Studies, and an affiliate faculty of the West Coast Poverty Center at the University of Washington (UW). She is a core faculty member of the Learning Sciences and Human Development, and the Education, Equity, and Society programs. Prior to joining UW, she completed a research fellowship at the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families. Drawing on transdisciplinary perspectives in psychology, sociology, and public policy, she studies the effects of public policies, immigration, and poverty on parenting and children’s development, particularly among ethnically diverse, immigrant-origin children. As a former editor of the Harvard Educational Review, she co-chaired a special issue, Immigration, Youth, and Education. She holds a doctorate in Human Development and Education and an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from Harvard University, and a B.A. in psychology, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.
June Paul is currently a doctoral student in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Graduate Research Fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty studying children, youth, and families in the child welfare system; intersectionality and disproportionality among dimensions of race, class, sexual orientation and gender identity in child welfare; youth aging out of foster care; strategies for providing effective services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth involved in social service systems; and policy and program evaluation. Prior to returning to graduate school, June managed state-wide child welfare programming and policies for over 15 years.
Deborah Phillips is Professor of Psychology and Associated Faculty in the McCourt School of Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. She was the first Executive Director of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families at the National Academies and served as Study Director for the Board’s report: From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development. She has also served as President of the Foundation for Child Development, Director of Child Care Information Services at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Congressional Science Fellow (Society for Research in Child Development). Her research focuses on the developmental effects of early childhood programs for both typically developing children and those with special needs, including research on child care, Head Start, and state pre-kindergarten programs. Dr. Phillips currently serves on the National Board for Education Sciences for the US Department of Education. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association. In 2011, she received the Distinguished Contributions to Education in Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.
Robert C. Pianta is Dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. He also holds positions as the Novartis Professor of Education, Founding Director of the Curry School’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), Professor of Psychology at the UVa College of Arts & Sciences, and Director of the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education. Pianta’s research and policy interests focus on teacher-student interactions and relationships and on the improvement of teachers’ contributions to students’ learning and development. Pianta is the creator of an observational assessment of teacher-student interactions known as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ with versions for use with infants through 12th grade students. He has also created professional development supports to improve teachers’ effectiveness called MyTeachingPartner™. Pianta began his career as a special education teacher. Upon completing a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota, he joined the University of Virginia faculty in 1986. He is a nationally recognized expert in both early childhood education and K–12 teaching and learning.
Lianna Pizzo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Dr. Pizzo has worked in the field of early education and care for over 15 years as a school psychologist, family literacy teacher, program director, and educational researcher. Her scholarship focuses on the curriculum, instruction, and assessment for bilingual and multilingual populations. Her work has been with both spoken language bilingual populations as well as American Sign Language (ASL)-English bilingual learners. Dr. Pizzo’s research includes an emphasis on linguistically responsive assessment practices of teachers in an urban public school with a high percentage of bilingual learners, ASL vocabulary instruction in ASL-English bilingual classrooms, and fidelity of implementation of assessment in early childhood settings. Her most recent work connects research on spoken language bilingualism and ASL-English bilingualism to address the needs of deaf ASL users who come from homes where a language other than English is present, or deaf multilingual learners (DMLs).
Terri J. Sabol is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and Faculty Associate for the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Development Science from the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the individual and environmental factors that lead to healthy child development, with a particular emphasis on schools and families.
Kristen S. Slack is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on understanding the role of poverty and economic hardship in the etiology of child maltreatment, with a particular emphasis on child neglect. She is also interested in the caseload dynamics of child welfare systems in relation to other public benefit systems, and in community-based programs designed to prevent child maltreatment. Her work advances approaches to better coordinating services and benefits to effectively address the economic needs of families at risk for child maltreatment, and improved assessment strategies for identifying risks and protective factors related to child neglect.
Susan M. Sheridan is Director of the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (CYFS), and a George Holmes University Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Dr. Sheridan’s research is focused on early childhood education and interventions; parent-teacher relationships; the development of meaningful home-school partnerships; and interventions promoting children’s social skills, social-emotional development and behavioral competencies. Sheridan has published more than 100 books, chapters, and refereed journal articles on early childhood, family-school partnerships, rural education, social-emotional skills and development, and behavioral interventions. The American Psychological Association’s Division 16 (School Psychology) recognized her research excellence with the Lightner Witmer Award (1993) for early career accomplishments and the Senior Scientist Award (2015) for distinguished career-long scholarship. She also received the 2005 Presidential Award from the National Association of School Psychologists, and the 2014 University of Nebraska’s Outstanding Research and Creativity Award.
Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and a faculty affiliate of the Center on Race and Social Problems and the Learning Research and Development Center. Elizabeth received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in 2004. Her research aims to strengthen understanding of the influences of socio-economic status, early childhood education and care, schools, families and communities on child development, with a particular focus on the lives of children from economically disadvantaged and immigrant families.
Sharon Wolf is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on the social and environmental determinants of child development and inequalities, with a focus on disadvantaged populations in the US, and in low-income and conflict-affected countries. After receiving her Ph.D., Sharon was a National Poverty Fellow with the Institute for Research on Poverty, where she was in residence at the US Department of Health and Human Services conducting poverty-related research and analysis. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Intervention with a concentration in Quantitative Analysis from New York University.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at the Steinhardt School of New York University, and a University Professor there. He studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood development, and poverty reduction, on child and youth development. He conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. He co-directs, with Larry Aber, the Global TIES for Children (Transforming Intervention Effectiveness and Scale) Center at New York University, a center devoted to research on programs and policies for children in low-income and conflict-affected countries. He also currently serves on the Leadership Council and as the Co-Chair of the ECD and education workgroup of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the research and technical group advising the Secretary-General on the 2015–2030 Sustainable Development Goals. He serves on the boards of the Foundation for Child Development and the Russell Sage Foundation.
A decade ago, Blackwell published its first Handbook of Early Childhood Development (McCartney & Phillips, 2006). This second edition (Votruba-Drzal & Dearing, 2016) offers much more than an update of the earlier volume. As with developmental growth, the chapters in this new volume capture both gradual advancements and dramatic leaps in the field’s attention and capacity to address pressing national issues facing young children, their families, and the social institutions that serve them. The trajectory of knowledge represented in this volume is characterized by both continuities and discontinuities. And, while sometimes linear, the chapters fully demonstrate how the field’s course towards greater understanding of development and how to best to support lifelong well-being takes unexpected turns and even experiences set-backs en route to continued growth.
What binds the two volumes is the field’s enduring fascination with the extraordinarily complex, adaptive capacity of the young child-in-context and the associated optimism of those who seek – through programs, practices, and policies – to direct this capacity towards promising lifelong development. The driving questions in the field continue to be: How do we account for individual differences in development, given the complex interplay between nature and nurture? When is there continuity and when is there change – or what is malleable? What are the mediating processes – genetic, biological, environmental – that support healthy development? How can we translate scientific knowledge into effective intervention strategies? And, how can we most responsibly move policy and practice forward with imperfect knowledge? This volume is replete with new insights into these questions. Below, we highlight five insights that cut across the volume’s chapters.
Notably, as indicated by this volume’s title – Handbook of Early Childhood Programs, Practices, and Policies – it is more applied in focus than was its predecessor. Far from implying that the evidentiary base on early development is fully mature and set to support a science of application and intervention, the authors cycle between evidence and its application and back to evidence, thus taking seriously Bronfenbrenner’s charge to the field that, “if you want to understand something, try to change it” (Bronfenbrenner, 1977, cited in Morris & Connors, this volume, pg. 20 manuscript). Indeed, virtually every set of authors in this volume acknowledges their intellectual debt to bioecological theory. Moreover, like young children, science develops in a context. Today, this context includes pressures from policymakers to identify “what works” and elevate approaches that have met the test of rigorous evaluation (see Jones et al., this volume). These pressures have fueled urgency within the field to deploy our empirical knowledge in the service of designing and documenting successful strategies for improving early developmental outcomes and life trajectories. Indeed, policymakers are increasingly mandating and scripting the specifics of program and policy evaluation initiatives, such as the National Head Start Impact Study, the Parents and Children Together evaluation, and the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program passed as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This Handbook’s focus on practices, programs, and policies reflects the field’s own positive adaption to this shifting policy context.
The first volume of the Handbook marked a period when the explosion of neurobiological and epigenetic evidence solidly identified the early years of life as a period when contexts and experiences have an especially profound impact on lifelong well-being. In this volume, authors highlight advancements over the past decade in the field’s understanding of the mechanisms that underlie early malleability and their exquisite sensitivity to environmental variation, including variation within the normal range of what most young children experience. As such, all early environments – not just those explicitly designed as interventions for children designated “at risk” – constitute “interventions” that shape development (explicitly or implicitly, for better or for worse) and are, in turn, amenable to being shaped by programs, practices and policies. This point of view is reflected in the wide swath of typical contexts covered in this volume. Families (e.g., parenting, marriage, working families) and early childhood care and education environments (e.g., child care, preschool education, classroom curricula) receive extensive attention – greater attention than in the 2006 Handbook. Morris and Connors (this volume) even call on the field to observe children in school lunchrooms and during recess. But, the authors also summarize advances in services and policies that are deliberately and explicitly designed to intervene in young children’s lives, e.g., poverty programs, special education, dual language instruction, and the child welfare system.
This volume also updates the evidence base on several targets for efforts to redirect the course of development that have long commanded the field’s attention: the quality of the proximal adult-child interactions that children experience, the adequacy of a family’s economic and social resources, and the supports for early learning that young children receive. But, it notably advances this evidence base with its attention to adult-focused interventions as an essential component of child or family-focused interventions. Classroom-based interventions now place a much stronger emphasis on professional support in the form of personalized coaching and mentoring, which go far beyond simply training teachers to implement instructional strategies (see Jones, McCoy, & Hay, Chapter 11). Taking this one step further, Johnson calls for explicit attention to the economic and psychological well-being of child care teachers as essential to the success of quality improvement initiatives (Chapter 12). The focus on family-centered practices in the special education field has led to a growing emphasis on family capacity-building approaches that address directly the high levels of parenting stress and poor self-efficacy that characterize families of children with disabilities (see Hauser-Cram, Heyman, & Bottema-Beutel, Chapter 10). The inclusion of Coley’s chapter on marriage policy and Gassman-Pines’ and Goldstein’s chapter on work-family policies explicitly acknowledges the power of adults’ exosystems to either support or undermine interventions focused on young children, and the importance therefore of directing intervention strategies towards these more child-distal systems as essential to facilitating positive child development.
This heightened emphasis on exo-level contexts is accompanied by far greater attention to the barriers that confront efforts to intervene in the lives of young children and the essential need for highly strategic and sustained approaches to supporting change efforts. The designers of the new generation of home visiting (see Chapter 14) and two-generation approaches (see Chapter 15), for example, have displayed a highly sensitive understanding of the need to address directly parents’ motivation and capacity to participate in these interventions, including experimentation with cohort models. “Community health promoters,” trusted community members who serve as outreach agents, are being used in immigrant neighborhoods to connect families to services and benefits (Park & Yoshikawa, Chapter 16). The era of “build it and they will come” approaches to family-focused interventions has come to an end. Today’s 2-G programs have also adopted localized human capital-building approaches tailored to the job markets in each program site and the pertinent credentials that employment in these markets requires. Similarly, those who design classroom-based interventions have arrived at a much greater appreciation for the need to offer teachers tools and strategies that are directly focused on desired outcomes (e.g., improved social skills, self-regulatory capacities) and can be inserted into ongoing classroom interactions to promote flexibility (Jones et al., Chapter 11