Focus on Learning

专注于学习

• 批准号: 8519490
• 负责人: JANET A WELSH
• 金额: $ 52.39万
• 依托单位: PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-05 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8519490
• 关键词: Academic achievement; Accounting; Achievement; Address; Aggressive behavior; Attention; Attenuated; Behavior; Behavioral; Characteristics; Child; Child Language; Child Support; Cognitive; Communities; Competence; Compliant Behaviors; Computers; Conflict (Psychology); Control Groups; Cooperative Behavior; Development; Dimensions; Disadvantaged; Discipline; Dose; Drops; Economically Deprived Population; Educational Curriculum; Effectiveness; Emotional; Emotions; Environment; Exercise; Exhibits; Family; Feedback; Feeling; Fostering; Funding; Goals; Head Start Program; Health; Home environment; Home visitation; House Call; Informal Social Control; Intervention; Language; Learning; Letters; Life; Low income; Mediating; Methods; Modeling; Monitor; Nursery Schools; Oral; Outcome; Parent-Child Relations; Parenting behavior; Parents; Performance; Play; Poverty; Problem Solving; Problem behavior; Randomized; Readiness; Reading; Research; Research Project Grants; Resources; Risk; Role; Schools; Self Efficacy; Social Adjustment; Specific qualifier value; System; Techniques; Testing; Time; Underachievement; United States; Verbal Learning; Videotape; base; child poverty; coping; design; efficacy trial; elementary school; experience; fall risk; first grade; foster child; high school; improved; informant; intervention effect; kindergarten; laptop; learned behavior; literacy; peer; programs; randomized trial; scaffold; second grade; skill acquisition; skills; skills training; social; socioeconomics; sound; teacher; therapy design; therapy development; third grade; uptake

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This research project seeks to improve the school readiness of children at risk for reading difficulties as they enter kindergarten. It will provide a parent-focused intervention, Focus on Learning, that combines parent-child activities (interactive reading, letter and sound games) and computer-based tutoring (targeting emergent literacy skills) with social-emotional support activities (targeting parental warm involvement, sensitive-responding, emotion coaching, and support for child self-regulation). The goal is to improve parent support for child learning at home, thereby fostering gains in child oral language skills, emergent literacy skills, and adaptive approaches to learning. The program has been field-tested and informed by the input of school-community teams in three diverse communities. Efforts have been made to package, pace, and organize the delivery of the program in a manner that optimally supports and engages parents, without overwhelming them with cognitive or behavioral demands. Pilot testing has validated "proof of concept" for the intervention approach, producing high rates of parent and child engagement, including substantial use of the learning activities at home, with reasonably high quality of implementation by parents (as rated by home visitors and documented on computer logs). Hence, the program is feasible and is now ready for an efficacy trial which can evaluate its impact on the targeted parenting skills and on child learning and achievement in a rigorous randomized trial. The proposed research project will screen all of the children attending kindergarten in three school districts serving primarily low-income families in order to identify 270 children who score one standard deviation below the national mean on standardized tests of literacy and language skills. These children will be randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Children and their families in the intervention condition will receive 15 home visits during kindergarten and 6 "booster" home visits during first grade. We will follow children through second and third grade, the point at which they should have mastered reading and be fully adjusted to the behavioral demands of the school setting. Assessments will utilize a multi-method, multi- informant strategy to monitor improvements in parental support for learning as targeted by the intervention, and in child oral language and literacy skills, as well as approaches to learning and academic achievement. We anticipate that children in the intervention condition will show greater gains in language, emergent literacy skills, adaptive approaches to learning, and learning behaviors at school, when compared with children in the control condition. We hypothesize that the gains in these skills will maintain over time, foster improved behavioral and social adaptation at school, and contribute to higher levels of academic achievement. Furthermore, we anticipate that parents who receive the intervention will improve the quality and quantity of learning support they offer their children at home, and that improvements in parent support for child learning at home will mediate intervention effects on child outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children who enter elementary school with cognitive and social-emotional delays are at an increased risk for reading problems, academic underachievement, and school disengagement, as well as for concurrent school behavior problems and conflictual relationships with teachers and peers (Campbell & von Stauffenberg, in press; Pianta & Castaldi, l989). The achievement gap widens over time, such that children living in poverty experience elevated rates of serious learning problems and underachievement as they move through the educational system, and many drop out prior to completing high school (Ryan et al., 2006). With rates of child poverty near 20 percent and climbing in the United States(Children's Defense Fund, 2005), the development of interventions to promote school readiness and reduce the achievement gap represents a national priority.

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究项目旨在提高儿童在进入幼儿园时的阅读困难风险的入学准备。它将提供一项以家长为重点的干预措施，即“注重学习”，将亲子活动（互动阅读、字母和声音游戏）和基于计算机的辅导（针对紧急识字技能）与社会情感支持活动（针对家长热情参与、敏感反应、情感辅导和支持儿童自我调节）相结合。其目标是改善家长对儿童在家学习的支持，从而促进儿童口头语言技能、新兴读写技能和适应性学习方法的进步。该方案已经过实地测试，并通过三个不同社区的学校-社区小组的投入获得信息。已经做出了努力，包装，步伐，并以最佳的方式组织该计划的交付支持和吸引家长，而不是压倒他们的认知或行为要求。试点测试验证了干预方法的“概念证明”，产生了很高的家长和儿童参与率，包括大量使用在家的学习活动，家长的实施质量相当高（由家访者评定并记录在计算机日志中）。因此，该计划是可行的，现在已经准备好进行有效性试验，可以在严格的随机试验中评估其对有针对性的育儿技能和儿童学习和成就的影响。拟议的研究项目将对主要为低收入家庭服务的三个学区的所有幼儿园儿童进行筛查，以确定270名在识字和语言技能标准化测试中得分低于全国平均水平一个标准差的儿童。这些儿童将被随机分配到干预组或对照组。处于干预条件下的儿童及其家庭将在幼儿园期间接受15次家访，在一年级期间接受6次“助推”家访。我们将跟踪孩子们到二年级和三年级，在这一点上，他们应该掌握阅读，并完全适应学校环境的行为要求。评估将采用多方法、多信息提供者的战略，以监测父母对干预措施所针对的学习的支持、儿童口头语言和识字技能以及学习方法和学业成绩的改善情况。我们预计，与对照组相比，干预组的儿童在语言、应急识字技能、适应性学习方法和学校学习行为方面会有更大的进步。我们假设，这些技能的收益将随着时间的推移而保持，促进改善在学校的行为和社会适应，并有助于更高水平的学术成就。此外，我们预计，家长谁收到的干预将提高质量和数量的学习支持，他们提供他们的孩子在家里，并改善家长对儿童在家学习的支持将介导的干预效果对儿童的成果。公共卫生相关性：进入小学时认知和社交情感发育迟缓的儿童出现阅读问题、学业成绩不佳和脱离学校的风险增加，同时出现学校行为问题以及与教师和同龄人的冲突关系（坎贝尔和冯·施陶芬伯格，出版中;皮安塔和卡斯塔尔迪，1989年）。成绩差距随着时间的推移而扩大，因此生活在贫困中的儿童在进入教育系统时遇到严重学习问题和成绩不佳的比率较高，许多儿童在完成高中学业之前辍学（Ryan等人，2006年）。在美国，儿童贫困率接近20%，而且还在上升（儿童保护基金，2005年），因此，制定干预措施，促进入学准备，缩小成绩差距，是国家的优先事项。