College of Education and Human Ecology faculty members have earned more than $43 million in external funding for early childhood initiatives that support a better understanding of how children learn as well as improvement of their well-being. The following seven active research awards are all conducted at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy (CCEC) and the Schoenbaum Family Center.
The Kids in Columbus Study (Mihaiela R. Gugiu, PI) will discover how community resources help young children grow up healthy and strong. The study seeks to understand how the mix, duration, extent, timing and type of investments during early life (0-5 years) impact the social-emotional, cognitive, behavioral and health development outcomes of children living in economically disadvantaged families.
The Early Head Start Partnership (Jane Wiechel, PI), led by the Schoenbaum Family Center, will provide funding over the next five years to help 800 Columbus children between six weeks and three years old have a happy and healthy start in life. We feature this new award on the first page of this newsletter.
The Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) Reading for Understanding (Laura Justice, PI) study focused on comprehension development and understanding for children ages 4-8 years old and followed 1,200 children longitudinally over five years. The primary purpose of this five-year project is to increase fundamental understanding of the role of lower- and higher-level language skills in listening and reading comprehension, and develop effective classroom-based approaches to increase language, general knowledge and comprehension skills in prekindergarten through grade three. The findings of the project as well as a Pre-K-Grade 3 curriculum Let’s Know! will be available this summer.
The Reading in Special Education (RISE) (Laura Justice, PI) study is examining the effects of the Read It Again! Pre-K curriculum in a randomized controlled trial in Ohio and Pennsylvania preschool classrooms serving children with disabilities. RISE seeks to learn how children’s experiences with storybooks in the classroom and at home contribute to children’s development in language and literacy during the preschool years.
The APPLE: Ohio (Assessing Preschool Professionals’ Learning Experiences) study (Shayne Piasta, PI) is looking at the extent to which professional development experiences for preschool teachers actually impact children’s gains in the classroom.
The Sit Together and Read-3 (STAR-3) (Laura Justice, PI) study is the third major study of the Sit Together and Read (STAR) shared reading program. STAR is a 15-week adult-child home reading program designed to improve children’s early literacy skills.
The Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR) (Jill Pentimonti, PI) study supports the expansion and validation of a new version of the SABR observational measure. The research will involve 300 early childhood teachers and 900 children in their classrooms recruited from across the states of Ohio and Texas. SABR measures the quality of teacher behaviors during shared book-reading sessions. In this four-year study, the tool will be revised for greater ease of use and accuracy by improving training materials and scoring protocols that will be disseminated at no cost via the internet.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of In Review, the EHE Office of Research Newsletter.
