Evidence-based Program for the Intergration of Curricula*

描述(由申请人提供)： 低收入学龄前儿童面临的识字和早期发展问题严重威胁着他们的学业成绩和社会适应。这些问题是教育和发展研究和实践中最长期和最重要的问题之一。对学龄前阶段的越来越多的关注突出了这一人生阶段，这是培养在学校取得成功所需技能的关键时期。低收入学龄前儿童面临着发展滞后和学习成绩差的不成比例的风险，这些问题在普遍贫困和机构资源有限的城市环境中加剧。在过去的10年里，研究人员试图通过考虑如何将早期识字和学习与儿童的心理社会福祉和社会文化背景的广泛层面联系起来来改善这些问题。然而，尽管迫切需要，但将这些不同的调查领域整合到幼儿发展中，或通过循证综合课程的严格多变量纵向研究来审查它们之间的相互作用的尝试太少了。在这一应用中，我们借鉴了发展生态学的概念框架来解决现有文献中的这些局限性。 该应用程序的主要目的是进行一系列研究，将以前孤立的研究和理论领域附加到完全整合的早期识字、算术和社会/情绪适应课程中，供生活在多样化、高风险城市环境中的低收入学龄前儿童使用。综合课程将与研究人员和实践者合作开发、测试和完善。它将建立在三个重点领域的实证研究基础上：(1)早期识字和语言，(2)早期算术和(3)社会/情绪适应，特别关注学习和情感发展的基本方法，以及发生发展的不同家庭、课堂和邻里环境。综合课程将分四个连续阶段形成和测试：平行课程整合阶段(1年级)、平行随机实地试验阶段(2年级)、全面课程整合阶段(3年级)和随机纵向实验阶段(4-5年级)。 这一应用程序的优势在于它整合了这些研究领域，使得应用程序实际上配置到了真实的学龄前课堂环境中，以及城市学前班儿童的家庭和文化中。总体而言，该项目的目标是：(A)开发一个以证据为基础的综合早期识字、算术和社会/情绪适应课程，以及(B)进行一项随机的纵向实验，利用最先进的研究方法，调查综合课程在不同形式和多种学龄前环境中的功效。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The literacy and early developmental problems facing low-income preschool children seriously threaten their academic achievement and social adjustment. Such problems are among the most longstanding and important issues in educational and developmental research and practice. Increased attention to the preschool years has spotlighted this period of life as a critical time for developing skills needed to be successful in school. Low-income preschool children are disproportionately at risk for developmental lags and poor school performance-problems exacerbated in urban settings with widespread poverty and limited institutional resources. Over the past 10 years, researchers have sought to ameliorate these problems by considering how to link early literacy and learning to broad dimensions of children's psychosocial well-being and socio-cultural context. However, despite the dire need, there have been too few attempts to integrate these different areas of inquiry in early childhood development or to examine the interactions between and among them through rigorous multivariate, longitudinal study of evidence-based integrative curricula. In this application, we draw upon a developmental ecological conceptual framework to address these limitations in the existing literature. The primary aim of this application is to conduct a series of studies that will additively connect previously isolated areas of research and theory into a fully-integrated early literacy, numeracy, and social/emotional adjustment curriculum for low-income preschool children living in diverse, high-risk urban settings. The integrated curriculum will be developed, tested, and refined in partnership with researchers and practitioners. It will be built upon empirical research in three focal areas: (1) early literacy and language, (2) early numeracy and (3) social/emotional adjustment, with special attention to foundational approaches to learning and emotional development, and to the differential family, classroom, and neighborhood contexts within which development occurs. The integrated curricula will formed and tested in four consecutive phases: parallel curricula integration phase (year 1), parallel randomized field trials phase (year 2), full curricular integration phase (year 3), and randomized longitudinal experiment phase (years 4-5). The strength of this application is its integration of these areas of research in such a way that applications are configured practically to the real preschool classroom environment, and the families and cultures of urban Head Start children. Overall, the project's goals are (a) to develop an evidence-based integrated early literacy, numeracy, and social/emotional adjustment curriculum, and (b) to conduct a randomized, longitudinal experiment that will investigate the efficacy of the integrated curriculum in alternative forms and across multiple preschool settings, using state-of-the-art research methods.