Dynamic Socioeconomic Disadvantage: Children in Family and School Contexts

描述(申请人提供)：鉴于美国儿童贫困率在过去几年中一直稳定在18%(国家贫困儿童中心，2006年)，在工业化国家中排名第二(仅略低于墨西哥：联合国儿童基金会，2005年)，了解贫困对儿童发展的影响一如既往地重要。我们的研究团队和其他人在社会经济劣势和儿童发展研究方面的最新进展，已经将人们的关注从收入贫困是否会影响儿童的结果，转移到更复杂的问题上，比如贫困如何影响儿童，与项目和政策创新的设计更具相关性的问题。因此，我们在本提案中的目标是加强实地对家庭收入和困难轨迹影响儿童在学业和社会情感领域的成功轨迹与困难轨迹的机制的了解。此外，我们建议将我们的经验视角扩展到家庭以外，以了解学校的社会经济劣势对儿童发展的重要贡献。综合研究人员在发展心理学、社会工作、教育、公共政策和社会学方面的专业知识，我们建议解决以下目标：目的I：考察家庭层面不利因素变化的时机、顺序和持续时间如何影响儿童从小学到中学的学习技能和社会情绪能力的发展。目的II：运用环境行动的特殊性理论框架来理解学校水平的不利因素对儿童学业成就和社会情绪能力的影响。目的三：考察家庭层面和学校层面的情境转变对家庭收入和困难的独立、联合和顺序的动态影响，进而对儿童的成就和社会情绪能力的发展产生影响。我们将分析1998-99幼儿园班级早期儿童纵向研究(ECLS-K)的所有五波数据，以解决这些目标。这项研究的发现有可能有助于政策和项目的进步，从而提高贫困和低收入家庭儿童的生活机会。本项目旨在了解家庭和学校层面的贫困和不利影响儿童从幼儿园到8年级的认知和社会情感发展的机制。这项研究的发现有可能有助于政策和项目的进步，从而提高贫困和低收入家庭儿童的生活机会。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the impact of living in poverty on children's development is as important as ever, given that the child poverty rate in the U.S. has remained stable at 18 percent for the last several years (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006) and is the second highest in the industrialized world (only slightly less than Mexico: UNICEF, 2005). Recent advances in research on socioeconomic disadvantage and child development by our research team and others have shifted concern from whether income poverty has an impact on children's outcomes to more complex questions regarding how poverty takes a toll on children, questions of greater relevance to the design of program and policy innovations. Thus our objective in this current proposal is to strengthen the field's understanding of the mechanisms through which families' trajectories of income and hardship affect children's trajectories of success versus difficulty in academic and socio-emotional domains. In addition, we propose to expand our empirical lens beyond families to the important contribution of school socio-economic disadvantage to children's development. In what represents a synthesis of the investigators' expertise in developmental psychology, social work, education, public policy, and sociology, we propose to address the following aims: Aim I: To examine how the timing, sequence, and duration of changes in family- level disadvantage impact the development of children's academic skills and social-emotional competence across elementary school and into middle school. Aim II: To apply the theoretical frame of specificity of environmental action to understanding the impact of school-level disadvantage on children's academic achievement and social-emotional competence. Aim III: To examine the independent, joint and sequential dynamic impacts of family-level and school-level contextual transitions on families' income and hardship and in turn on the development of children's achievement and social-emotional competence. We will analyze data from all five waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to address these aims. Findings from this research have the potential to contribute to policy and program advances that will enhance the life chances of children in poor and low income families. This project aims to understand the mechanisms through which family-level and school-level poverty and disadvantage affect children's cognitive and social-emotional development from kindergarten through 8th grade. Findings from this research have the potential to contribute to policy and program advances that will enhance the life chances of children in poor and low income families.