An Epidemiological and Longitudinal Study of Rural Child Literacy Trajectories

描述(申请人提供)：小学阶段是为孩子未来的学业成功奠定基础的关键时期。在此期间培养的最重要的学术技能是识字，没有识字，大多数其他内容领域的材料都不能很好地学习。研究发现，识字轨迹在小学早期往往是固定的，特别是对有风险的儿童。在童年中期，识字率的固定下降路径在生活在低财富农村社区的儿童中尤其普遍，其中许多是非裔美国人。在这个童年中期，有一些重要的过程可以帮助我们理解儿童不同的识字途径。这一特定的发展阶段对于我们理解儿童技能、指导和父母养育如何相互作用以塑造正在形成的识字能力至关重要。该项目利用了对农村贫困儿童的大量代表性样本收集的数据，这些儿童自出生以来一直受到跟踪。家庭生活项目是由NICHD资助的一个为期11年的计划项目。这一精心挑选的样本使用了流行病学框架，招募了居住在六个农村贫困县之一的母亲所生的每个婴儿的代表性样本。FLP中的1292名儿童从出生起就拥有关于儿童发展的广泛数据，包括：从6个月到一年级观察家庭教养输入(敏感度、语言输入和父母资源)，从K到3年级观察课堂教学质量，从K到3年级对识字教学时间和内容的教师评分；以及从K到3年级在词汇、单词识别和阅读理解方面的儿童识字技能。拟议的项目将增加观察到的教学质量和五年级教师的教学评级，以及评估五年级和七年级的儿童识字技能。通过研究家庭、育儿方式、学校、教室和教师的特点，我们将能够更好地解释从小学到中学的不同种族、贫困和性别以及学校贫困程度在儿童成就上的不同轨迹。了解小学早期的教学质量与后期的教学质量在预测识字技能方面是否更重要，以及整个小学的教学质量是否仍然对后来的7年级识字产生影响，这将是重要的探索。此外，至关重要的是要了解，与其他儿童相比，高质量的教育对识字技能较低的儿童是否更重要，以及在预测识字技能方面，教育是否对我们的其他风险群体(非裔美国人、贫困状况、性别和学校贫困)更重要。这个项目将有助于我们理解在小学期间观察到的具体儿童技能X教师指导互动是否可以预测低收入农村地区儿童在小学和中学期间的识字成就，超过父母教养和人口统计协变量。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Elementary school is the critical period for setting the stage for children's future academic success. The most important academic skill that is developed during this period is literacy, without which most other content area material cannot be learned well. Research has found that literacy trajectories often become fixed in early elementary school, especially for children at risk. A fixed downward path in literacy during middle childhood is especially prevalent for children living in low-wealth rural communities, many of whom are African American. There are important processes at play during this middle childhood period that can help us understand children's diverging literacy pathways. This particular developmental period is critical to our understanding of how child skills, instruction, and parenting may interact to shape the emerging competence in literacy. This project capitalizes on the data already collected on a large representative sample of children living in rural poverty who have been followed since birth. The Family Life Project has been an 11 year program project funded by NICHD. This carefully selected sample used an epidemiological frame to recruit a representative sample of every baby born to a mother who resided in one of six poor rural counties. The 1292 children in the FLP have extensive data from birth on children's development, including: observed parenting input in the home (sensitivity, language input, and parent resources) from 6 months to 1st grade, observed quality of instruction in the classroom from K through 3rd grade, teacher ratings of literacy instructional time and content from K through 3rd grade; and child literacy skills in vocabulary, word recognition and reading comprehension from K-3rd grade. The proposed project would add observed quality of instruction and teacher ratings of instruction in 5th grade as well as assessed child literacy skils at 5th grade and 7th grade. Through our examination of the characteristics of families, parenting, schools, classrooms, and teachers, we will be able to better account for the different trajectories in child achievement by race, poverty, and gender as well as by school poverty level throughout elementary school and into middle school. Understanding whether early vs. later quality of instruction in elementary school is more important in predicting literacy skills as wellas whether the quality of instruction across elementary school still has an influence in accounting for later 7th grade literacy will be important to explore. Furthermore, it is critically important o understand whether high quality of instruction is more important for children with lower literacy skills in comparison to other children as well as whether instruction is more important for our other risk groups (African American, poverty status, gender and school poverty) in predicting literacy skills. This project will contribute uniquely to our understanding of whether specific observed child skill X teacher instruction interactions during elementary school predict literacy achievement in children in low-wealth rural areas during elementary school and into middle school, above and beyond parenting and demographic covariates.