This application responds to RFA-HD-02-005, """"""""Early Childhood Education and School Readiness Planning Grants."""""""" It examines the poor school outcomes for economically disadvantaged children from the perspective of developmental epidemiology, and conceptualizes early education programs as a risk-oriented prevention strategy. The risk factors associated with poor school performance occur in multiple domains (e.g., cognitive and linguistic skills, problem behavior, motivation, and family context) and have cumulative effects on learning, achievement, social competency, mental health, and a wide range of other important childhood and life-span developmental outcomes. A promising approach for preschool curricula is an integrated emphasis on the aspects of cognitive development (e.g., language) and appropriate behavior (e.g., social skills, self-regulation) most central to school success. A planning process is proposed for the purpose of develop programmatic research on the effectiveness of an innovative curriculum that integrates the Bright Beginnings language and literacy-oriented curriculum developed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (NC) with a version of the Reaching Educators, Children, and Parents (RECAP) program adapted for preschool children (Han & Catron, 2002). The research program envisioned includes (a) a multi-site cluster randomized factorial experiment investigating the separate and conjoint effects of Bright Beginnings and RECAP for Head Start students, (b) longitudinal follow-up of school success outcomes through the third grade, and (c) an embedded observational study focusing on student, teacher, student-teacher interaction, classroom, school, and program implementation variables hypothesized to moderate or mediate those outcomes. A multidisciplinary, multi-site research team and researcher-practitioner collaboration have been established and are ready to undertake the planning of this project.
The specific aims of the proposed planning process are to: 1. strengthen and extend the research collaboration 2. use the researcher-practitioner partnerships to collaboratively plan the program implementation 3. design and plan the research; prepare an application for funding.
