Dynamic Socioeconomic Disadvantage: Children in Family and School Contexts

描述（由申请人提供）：了解生活在贫困中对儿童发展的影响与以往一样重要，因为美国的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：儿童基金会，2005年）。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关注点从收入贫困是否会对儿童的结果产生影响转移到更复杂的问题，即贫困如何对儿童造成影响，这些问题与计划和政策创新的设计更相关。因此，我们在目前的建议的目标是加强外地的机制，通过家庭的收入和困难的轨迹影响儿童的轨迹的成功与困难的学术和社会情感领域的理解。此外，我们建议扩大我们的经验透镜以外的家庭的重要贡献，学校的社会经济不利条件对儿童的发展。在什么代表了发展心理学，社会工作，教育，公共政策和社会学的研究人员的专业知识的综合，我们提出解决以下目标：目的一：检查时间，顺序和持续时间的变化，在家庭层面的不利影响儿童的学业技能和社会情感能力的发展，在小学和中学。目标二：运用环境行为特异性理论框架，探讨学校层面的弱势对儿童学业成就和社会情绪能力的影响。目标三：研究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、联合和连续的动态影响，进而对儿童的成就和社会情感能力的发展产生影响。我们将分析1998- 1999年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。这项研究的结果有可能有助于政策和计划的进步，这将提高贫困和低收入家庭儿童的生活机会。该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八年级的认知和社会情感发展的机制。这项研究的结果有可能有助于政策和计划的进步，这将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.