By 2040, people identified as ?ethnic minority? will comprise half the U.S. population. In urban cities, the vast majority of children entering preschool/elementary school and high school are Latino, Asian or African American, and how well these children and their families adjust to these high-stake school transitions will have long term implications for children's developmental outcomes as well as the future of the U.S. In the context of growing diversity among the nation's children, systematic inquiry into the experiences and developmental pathways of children from different cultural communities during periods of major transitions is urgently needed.
In response, the NYU IRADS builds on 5 years of research under NYU's Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education (CRCDE), and seeks to advance scientific theory and knowledge on children's social, emotional and cognitive development in ethnically diverse populations. Plans are to follow a group of 900 urban, predominantly low-income and working class families of Mexican, Dominican, Chinese, European and African American decent with young children (4-7 years) and adolescents (13-17 years) as children enter preschool/elementary school and high school. The majority of these families have participated in the research of the CRCDE over the past several years, and have already provided rich information on the background experiences of these children and families beginning at children's birth (in the early childhood group) and entry into middle school (in the adolescent group). The five ethnic groups were selected for study, as they comprise the majority of children in New York City. In addition, they enable contrasts among groups with different immigration statuses, histories of discrimination related to race and skin color, citizenship status, and language and cultural backgrounds.
The planned activities involve continued gathering of original data on aspects of children's cognitive, social, and emotional development and experiences in home and school settings that would be most sensitive to children's experiences across critical transitions. Within the area of social development, focus will be on social competence and social identity. For cognitive development, focus will be on language/literacy, math concepts and performance, classification skills, attention abilities, and academic performance and engagement. For emotional development, focus will be on children's emotion regulation. Together, these skills form the building blocks for healthy developmental outcomes. In home and school settings, focus will be on the beliefs and practices of parents, teachers and children; the quality of relationships (e.g., parent-child, teacher child); and financial resources.
The Intellectual Merit of this research includes the generation of new, culturally grounded theory and knowledge on the development and experiences of children from diverse ethnic backgrounds across multiple developmental areas, social settings, and significant developmental transitions. The Broader Impacts are framed by a set of integrated plans to advance research and education on ethnically diverse populations through the: (1) training of a new generation of scholars (especially underrepresented minorities) to engage in research that advances the scientific mission; (2) sharing of instruments, methods, and findings so as to strengthen the scientific capacity of researchers to engage in culturally sensitive studies of children's development; (3) dissemination of findings to researchers, educators and policy makers through publications, trainings, briefings and community outreach; and (4) strengthening of local, national, and international partnerships.
The focus of our work has been to advance research on children’s learning and development. To this end, we conducted parallel longitudinal studies of ethnically diverse families with young children (0-6) and adolescents (13-17) as children transition to preschool/elementary school and high school, respectively. The specific aims were to examine: (1) trajectories of and intersections among children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development; (2) children’s experiences of and the intersections between home and school settings; and (3) the ways in which home and school settings jointly and interactively influence children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. For each aim, we explored ethnic and gender differences in children’s developmental trajectories, home and school experiences, and the intersections between these, with a focus on the ways in which beliefs and practices within cultural communities shape these processes. During the length of the award, we collected data from hundreds of children and parents from ethnically diverse backgrounds. The families participating in the two projects project were primarily from poor and working class communities. In the early childhood cohort, we conducted home and laboratory visits on families living in New York City who are of Chinese, Mexican, Dominican, African American backgrounds, seen from infancy through 1st grade. In the EAC cohort, we gathered survey data on thousands of adolescents, in-depth survey and qualitative data from over 100 young adolescents and their parents. Across the two studies, we used multiple methods of data gathering, including surveys, qualitative interviews, ethnographic approaches, observational techniques, and direct child assessments to measure children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development and experiences in home and school settings that, theoretically, would be most sensitive to children’s experiences across critical transitions. Within the domain of social development, we focused on social competence and social identity processes related to gender and ethnicity and race. For cognitive development, we focused on language/literacy, numeracy, classification skills and executive functioning among children, and academic performance and engagement among adolescents. For emotional development, we focused on emotion regulation. Findings from these investigations highlight several cross-cutting themes about the nature of children’s growing skills in language, cognitive, social and emotional domains, and gender and race/ethnic identity, as well as the antecedents and long-term implications of these skills for children’s learning and development over time. First, our work highlights the notion that changes in one area of development have implications for other areas. For example, children’s language experiences have implications for cognitive understanding (Song, Spier, Tamis-LeMonda, 2013); children’s emerging language skills relate to emotional understanding (Kahana Kalman, in preparation); children’s and parents’ experiences of discrimination affect health (e.g., Halim et al., 2013); children’s gender identity development relates to their feelings of self-worth (Halim, et al., 2011); children’s growing executive control skills relate to their math competencies (Ng, et al.,2013); declines to interest in learning leads to lower academic performance (McFadden et al., 2013). Second, our work highlights the ways that children from different cultural communities display different profiles of change across different skill areas. For example, Mexican children show early gains in gestural communication (Tamis-Lemonda, et al., 2012) and abilities to self regulate (Kalman, in preparation), but show delays in areas of vocabulary growth. Compared to their African American, Mexican, and Dominican counterparts, Chinese children display relatively advanced skills in standardized literacy and numeracy assessments but they are less skilled in areas of emotional understanding (Kalman) and the use of emotion talk (Luo et al, under review). Third, findings show that children’s social experiences are shaped by cultural and economic contexts, which themselves are reflected in parents’ views and practices (Luo, et al., 2013; Ng, et al., 2012). Finally, much of our work indicates the ways that social identity (gender, race, or ethnicity) affect children’s approaches to learning, the skills that they acquire, academic achievement, and how they relate to others in social settings (Hughes, et al, in preparation). In particular, children who showed more gender-stereotype flexibility tended to evaluate the other gender more positively. As for attitudes about their own gender, the data revealed that increases in children’s knowledge about gender stereotypes and increases in children’s understanding of gender categories from age 4 to 5 predicted greater identification with gender at age 5 (Zosuls et. al,2009). Notably, these findings on developmental cascades, cultural and economic contexts, and social experiences and identity have broad implications for education, policy, and practice. In this regard, we have shared our findings with key stakeholders at local, state, and federal levels, including dissemination to: (1) community agencies (Head Starts, Early Head Starts, and Parenting Programs); (2) government officials at the local (NYC) and federal (Congress) level; (3) teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders at preschools, elementary schools, and middle schools and high schools; and (4) hospitals, pediatric groups, and community health care clinics.
