PATHWAYS TO LITERACY

该申请在更大的NICHD幼儿保育研究中提出了一个具体的子研究。 拟议的研究将审查在童年中期识字和认知发展的性质和来源。 利用从生态学角度采用的复杂，多层次，互动的框架，研究将特别侧重于儿童，家庭和学校因素在塑造认知和识字技能从一年级到五年级的增长的独立和综合影响。 拟议的研究的一个独特之处是努力开发分析和方法的策略，捕捉在线的相互作用的认知结果的影响力的多个来源。 一个发展的“路径”或“轨迹”的概念是详细阐述和利用作为一个框架，用于描述发展变化的复杂性质和力量塑造它在早期的学年。 此外，该建议旨在利用路径概念来阐明当前认知发展中的三个重要主题：领域特异性，稳定性和变化以及风险弹性。 在每一种情况下，都会有人认为，绘制随时间推移的发展路径将有助于了解哪些认知和识字技能得到发展，哪些没有作为学校教育经验的函数（领域特异性），哪些技能随着时间的推移表现出相对稳定性（稳定与变化）从早期到后期的学年，以及如何有害或有益的结果是由风险和保护因素的复杂相互作用产生的（风险抵御能力）。 总的来说，拟议的研究将促进理解和研究的性质和来源的认知和识字增长在小学几年。

The application proposes a specific substudy within the larger, NICHD Study of Early Child Care. The proposed research will examine the nature and sources of literacy and cognitive development during the middle childhood years. Utilizing a complex, multi-level, interactive framework adopted from ecological perspectives, the research will focus specifically on the independent and combined influences of child, family and schooling factors in shaping growth of cognitive and literacy skills from first to fifth grade. A unique feature of the proposed research is the effort to develop analytic and methodological strategies for capturing on-line the interplay of multiple sources of influence on cognitive outcomes. The concept of a developmental 'pathway' or 'trajectory' is elaborated and utilized as a framework for describing the intricate nature of developmental change and the forces shaping it over the early school years. In addition, the proposal seeks to utilize the pathway notion to illuminate three currently important topics in cognitive development: domain-specificity, stability and change and risk-resilience. In each case, it will be argued that charting developmental pathways over time will help to understand which cognitive and literacy skills develop and which do not as a function of schooling experiences (domain-specificity), which skills show relative stability over time (stability vs. change) from the early to later school years and how harmful or beneficial outcomes are produced by the complex interactions of risk and protective factors (risk-resilience). Overall, the proposed research will advance understanding and study of the nature and sources of cognitive and literacy growth during the elementary school years.