MacArthur Network on Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood Research Initiatives MacArthur School Transition Study The New Hope Child and Family Study California Childhoods Project: Institutions, Contexts, and Pathways of Development Children of Immigrants Engagement With Institutions

MacArthur School Transition Study The Comprehensive Child Development Programs were initiated by Congress to test the effectiveness of comprehensive, community-based, and family-focused services for promoting child and family development. CCDP delivered a wide range of services to low-income, "multi-risk" families, including health care and screenings, early childhood education, parent training, adult education, counseling and rehabilitation, housing assistance, and subsidies for child care, medical payments and emergencies. The CCDP team is developing new literacy and achievement assessments for children who are in third grade this academic year, and revising other measures to be appropriate for older children. During the winter and spring, data on 40 children in the first grade, 325 in second grade, and 40 in third grade will be collected, using grade-appropriate measures. A third parent interview will be planned for next spring. Although some questions from previous parent interviews will be repeated, the next interview will also include questions concerning the effects of welfare reform on parents' and children. The team is also beginning to analyze the data for the kindergarten cohort, which is the only grade that all children in the sample have completed. Jennifer Greene, a leader in the field of mixed-methods became a member of the team and is helping develop innovative strategies for integrating the quantitative and qualitative data. The ethnographers will continue to interview case study families, and plan to follow children through their school day and after-school activities. For more information, see the 1999 Project Summary page. The New Hope Child and Family Study New Hope is a community-based initiative operating in two neighborhoods in Milwaukee. The New Hope program makes a simple offer to participating households: if there is a household member working full time, the program will assure that household income rises above the poverty line and household members have access to child care and medical services. As such, it represents a work-based alternative to welfare and a new way in which to address the income needs of the working poor. Eligibility for the program is restricted to households in the two neighbor-hoods with income below 150 percent of the poverty line and that includes an adult who is willing to work full time. For more information, see the 1999 Project Summary page. California Childhoods Project: Institutions, Contexts, and Pathways of Development How do the daily contexts of children's lives influence their experiences and pathways of development? Network members Catherine Cooper and Barrie Thorne, in consultation with Hanne Haavind, and assisted by two post-doctoral researchers and several graduate students, are using a comparative case study approach to explore this question in three communities in California that vary in social class and ethnic composition and in processes of racialization and histories of immigration. For more information, see the 1999 Project Summary page. Children of Immigrants Immigrant families have always been a part of our society. However, as shifting demographic trends bring non-white populations into the United States, the issues that these immigrants and this society face have changed. When children have been directly studied as immigrants, or as children of immigrants, the roles of cultural conflict and acculturative stress have been a central organizing principle. Thus, researchers have tended to focus on the negative psychological impact of immigration as manifested in measurable psychiatric and behavioral problems. The research being designed by the network will focus instead on the normative processes and experiences of adjustment and acculturation and the more subjective socio-emotional aspects of growing up as the child of an immigrant in the United States. For more information, see the 1999 Project Summary page. Engagement With Institutions A group of Network members have begun to explore the idea of engagement as one way to think about the link between individuals and activity settings or institutions. We think that this concept may be especially useful for studying changing pathways through middle childhood. Our focus on this concept/metaphor was stimulated by the widely held general impression that children who will end up having troubled secondary school careers often disengage from school much earlier - during their elementary school years. In American society, this is also the period in life in which the peer group begins to exert increasing influence, and that children take more responsibility for choosing activities such as participation in sports, religion, and clubs. During middle childhood, some children begin to emerge from their family cocoons by making activity and involvement choices that, given institutional arrangements not of their making, can have major consequences for the rest of their lives. For more information, see the 1999 Project Summary page.   HomePage

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