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Current DevelopmentsIntroductionMajor Programmatic Themes Project Summaries for 1997 Publications and Presentations Network Trainees
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IntroductionThis year, work has continued on each of the three major initiatives begun during our first implementation period: the New Hope Child and Family Study, the School Transition Study and California Childhoods. Two other large-scale efforts are also underway: the Children of Immigrants and Engagement with Institutions projects. Dissemination activities continue in the form of publications and presentations, two conferences and planning for future edited volumes. The School Transition Study has continued to gather and analyze data from teachers, parents, children and community stakeholders and ethnographic work has been completed at the three sites. The research team is now heavily engaged in mixed-method analyses, working to integrate findings from the survey and interview data with ethnographic field notes. Individual case study information is also being used creatively to develop 'teaching cases' that will be useful for practitioners interested in developing better home-school linkages. In other developments, the study team has received dozens of requests for the numerous classroom, observation, parent, teacher and child measures developed for the project. All of these measures are now available on the Network's web site. Additionally, the School Transition Study researchers have been awarded a 3-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. The grant will fund an additional wave of data collection in the fifth grade, which will be crucial for examining many of the studies main hypotheses about school readiness and educational progress in the early school years. Analyses of the Child and Family component of the New Hope study have been completed for the 24-month survey and planning is nearly complete for the 60-month follow-up survey. In Addition, ethnographic fieldwork continues with intensive qualitative interviews with participants and non-participants. The final report on the findings from the 24-month survey was completed this year and widely disseminated to the research community and to local and national policy-makers. Overall, findings indicated that New Hope increased employment and earnings, leading in turn to increased income during the first year of follow-up and enabling more low-income workers to earn their way out of poverty. New Hope's effects on employment and income, coupled with its provision of health insurance and child care subsidies, set off a chain of beneficial effects for participants' families and their children. On average, New Hope participants were less stressed, had fewer worries, and experienced less material hardship (particularly that associated with lack of health insurance) than control group members. Participants' children had better educational outcomes, higher occupational and educational expectations, and more social competence; boys also showed fewer behavior problems in the classroom. The study findings were summarized in most of the major national news and outlets and were also covered by dozens of regional publications. The research team gave presentations to New Hope's national advisory board, at research conferences, in briefings with senior congressional staffers in Washington, and even before a House subcommittee. Operating now with funding from a 5-year grant from NICHD, the New Hope team is completing the design of the 60-month follow-up survey, set to begin in early 2000. The survey will focus more heavily on child outcomes but will also include economic, child care, parent well-being, family management and school indicators. The findings will indicate the extent to which the program benefits were sustained beyond the end of the intervention. With field work complete in the three sites, the California Childhoods researchers are now analyzing thousands of pages of field notes and other data collected over the last three years. Several scholarly publications have already emerged from this work and many others are in progress. Network members are also sharing their findings with state-level education policy groups in an effort to shape both the academic curriculum and the structure of educational institutions in California. The first of our new studies, the Children of Immigrants project, is now well underway with data collection ongoing at each of the three sites: Providence, Philadelphia and New York City. Interviews are being conducted with hundreds of children, parents, teachers and community leaders. Hundreds of hours of classroom observations have been done in Providence. The Philadelphia team is analyzing transcripts from dozens of focus groups with ethnic minority parents. Finally, early findings from experimental studies being done at NYU have already been presented at a conference on immigration. The rapid pace of data collection has also consumed Network members working with the Engagement with Institutions project. In the past year, the research team has developed a survey instrument to assess children's engagement or attachment to school in three domains: affective, behavioral and cognitive. The measure also taps children's sense of belongingness, safety, perceptions of the physical environment of the school, and support from others. The survey was fielded in schools in Chicago, Detroit and Flint and data from over 400 1st and 3rd grade students are now being analyzed. In addition, a more in-depth individual interview was developed and administered to a subset of the survey children and also with their parents. Modifications to the survey and the interview are being completed and planning is underway for a larger-scale survey assessment of students in school districts from around the country. In addition to primary data collection projects, several other initiatives are being undertaken. Two innovative and interdisciplinary conferences are being held or planned this year. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Network is hosting a conference on students' engagement in school and other institutions. Participants will include researchers from several disciplines, educational practitioners including teachers, principals and school district administrators, and also national policy-makers. We hope this will be the first in a series of meetings aimed at better understanding the factors that promote engagement in adult-led organizations. A second conference, focusing on mixed-method techniques, will be held next year. These meetings will include presentations on innovative methods being developed within each of the Network's programmatic areas, including poverty and child development, educational performance, race and ethnicity, and developmental pathways. Papers from this conference will be published in an edited volume. Finally, Network members continue to collaborate with other interdisciplinary research groups, such as the Family Research Consortium, Children 5-16 Research Programme, and many others.
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