Dynamic Socioeconomic Disadvantage: Children in Family and School Contexts

描述（由申请人提供）：了解贫困生活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：联合国儿童基金会，2005年）。我们的研究团队和其他人最近在社会经济劣势和儿童发展方面的研究进展已经将关注的焦点从收入贫困是否对儿童的结果产生影响转移到更复杂的问题上，如贫困如何对儿童造成影响，这些问题与项目和政策创新的设计更相关。因此，我们在当前提案中的目标是加强该领域对家庭收入和困难轨迹影响儿童在学业和社会情感领域成功与困难轨迹的机制的理解。此外，我们建议将我们的经验视角扩展到家庭之外，以了解学校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，我们提出以下目标：目的一：研究家庭层面劣势变化的时间、顺序和持续时间如何影响儿童从小学到初中的学业技能和社会情感能力的发展。目的二：运用环境行为特异性的理论框架来理解学校劣势对儿童学业成绩和社会情感能力的影响。目的三：研究家庭层面和学校层面的背景转变对家庭收入和困难的独立、联合和连续的动态影响，进而影响儿童成就和社会情感能力的发展。我们将分析1998-99年幼儿园班级早期儿童纵向研究（ECLS-K）的所有五波数据来解决这些问题。这项研究的结果有可能促进政策和项目的进步，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层面和学校层面的贫困和劣势对幼儿园至8年级儿童认知和社会情感发展的影响机制。这项研究的结果有可能促进政策和项目的进步，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.