Enhancing Child Preschool Readiness in Early Head Start

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Developmental science and early intervention studies have identified key school "readiness" skills; included among these are: attention and behavioral regulation, relationship skills, receptive and expressive language skills, and emergent literacy skills. In the proposed project, we intend to test the combined and separate impact on these readiness skills of relational and emergent literacy curricula delivered through Early Head Start Mixed-Model programs (EHS-Mix) to infants and toddlers aged 0-3. The emergent literacy curriculum is Dialogic Reading (DR), which can be offered to train both child care providers and parents. The four relational curricula to be studied are: 1) Partners in Parenting Education/Emotional Beginnings (PIPE/EB) and 2) Promoting First Relationships (PFR), which offer training to both parent educators and child care providers, 3) Early Head Start-Montessori (EHS-Montessori), which offers training to child care providers, and 4) the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), which offers training to nurses working with parents. A multi-site study is planned in which several strategies will be employed to contrast single relational approaches with and without DR in their impacts on children's readiness skills assessed in the third year of life. This investigation will also study implementation of the curricular approaches, including: a) the intensity, duration, and qualities of curricular approaches and EHS services delivered, b) backgrounds of staff who are trained, c) impacts of curricular training on staff skills and professional development, d) parent and child experience of the interventions, e) costs of training. This planning grant will permit the following activities to support the development and articulation of this proposed investigation: 1) refinement of curricular approaches, 2) identification and recruitment of collaborating program sites, 3) consultation with national experts, 4) meeting of investigative team to design assessments, 5) pilot testing of initial assessments, 6) meeting with other grantees to explore continuities in study methods, 7) final decisions regarding method of constructing comparison groups and preparation of the multisite proposal, and 8) recruit and enroll women in the test of the NFP program within Early Head Start.