Understanding how to support the early learning opportunities of children from under-resourced communities

Gjennom finansiering i UTNAM har forskere ved Institutt for pedagogikk fått mulighet til å invitere Prof. C Cybele Raver and Dr. Tyler Watts fra New York University til Universitetet i Oslo. I arbeidet med ‘Chicago School Readiness’ prosjektet (CSRP), som ble gjennomført barnehager i høy-risiko nabolag i Chicago, har Prof. Raver og Dr. Watts studert tiltak rettet mot å fremme barns selvregulering og kvaliteter ved lærer-barns samspill i klasserommet. Forskerne dokumenterer blant annet hvordan slike intervensjoner kan gi meningsfulle og langsiktige effekter knyttet til barns læring og utvikling. Prof. Raver og Dr. Watts skal være ved Institutt for pedagogikk i en periode på to uker i slutten av mai og samarbeide med forskere i forskergruppen TextDim. Vi vil også arrangere en åpen forelesning og et PhD kurs.

In this application, we detail plans to strengthen our collaboration with the goal of developing a deeper understanding of empirically-supported methods designed to support the early learning opportunities of children from low-income families. We propose inviting two scholars with extensive experience in early childhood development and education from New York University, Deputy Provost C. Cybele Raver and Research Assistant Professor Tyler Watts, to collaborate on our current and planned research projects and to conduct methods training with graduate students. The proposed research stay will last for a period of 2 weeks. During this time, we will run a PhD course, and arrange other venues of knowledge sharing, and build on our existing research collaborations. Raver and Watts are currently working on a number of studies connected to their collaboration on the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP). They have uncovered promising evidence that early interventions focused on promoting self-regulation and improving the quality of teacher and child interactions can have meaningful long-term impacts on children’s development. Raver and Watts are currently tracking the children who first participated in the study to test whether the intervention altered children’s long-term developmental trajectories, and they recently published an article reporting promising long-term intervention impacts on adolescent measures of executive function and academic achievement (Watts et al., 2018). This work has important conceptual and methodological implications for the educational research conducted by Rydland and Lawrence (Grover, Lawrence, & Rydland, 2016; Rydland, Grøver, & Lawrence, 2014a, 2014b) and for their ongoing analysis of data from “Teaching for text comprehension: Supporting young second-language learners' text comprehension in urban multiethnic preschools (2013-2017)”. This visit will deepen the connection between these project and our two institutions.