IRADS: The Study of Culture, Social Settings, and Child Development across School Transitions

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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.