Early Care and Education & Pre-K Education

Early care and education provide a strong foundation for children's academic success and overall well-being. This focus area has been central to the work of the Institute since its founding more than 50 years ago. One of FPG's first and most influential projects was a longitudinal study of the effectiveness of an early care and education intervention for children from low-income households. This work continues today with research on closing the achievement gap and providing support for dual language learners.

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The STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education Center (STEMIE)—a national technical assistance center working to ensure that all young children with and without disabilities are engaged in early STEM learning—has begun providing targeted technical assistance to cohorts of faculty and practitioners in the early childhood education field.

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The Transforming Implementation Practice in Early Childhood through the Development of a Professional Learning Program to Support Practitioners' Implementation Capabilities project serves to support the development of early childhood practitioners’ ability to care for children and get them ready for kindergarten by improving their capacity for implementation of interventions in primary care settings.

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Jada Walker, MEd, is a project coordinator at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute working on early care and education/Pre-K research projects where she manages budgets, timelines, staffing, data activities, reports, and products for dissemination of findings.

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Transforming Implementation Practice in Early Childhood through the Development of a Professional Learning Program to support Practitioners' Implementation Capabilities

The purpose of this project is to support the development of the early childhood practitioners’ ability to care for children and get them ready for kindergarten by improving their capacity for implementation of interventions in primary care settings.

Center For Home-Based Child Care Research

In partnership with the Erikson Institute, the University of Delaware, the Indigo Cultural Center, and the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), the Equity Research Action Coalition at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute will establish a Center for Home-based Child Care Research to support research about home-based child care (HBCC) in states, territories, tribes, and/or local community contexts through a cooperative agreement with OPRE. The purpose of the Center is to provide leadership, build research capacity in the field, and offer support in the development and facilitation of local research to improve understanding of HBCC settings and providers and access by the families who seek and utilize HBCC.

Classroom and Home Contexts of Spanish-English Dual Language Learners' Socioemotional Development

UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute is collaborating with CU Denver to analyze secondary data on Spanish-speaking dual language learners (DLLs) attending pre-K. The project aims to: • identify socioemotional development profiles for Spanish-English DLLs; • examine how individual characteristics and family contexts differ across these profiles; and • determine which classroom sociocultural factors predict different socioemotional profiles.

Early Childhood TA Center

The Early Childhood TA Center (ECTA) is funded to support state Early Intervention and Preschool Special Education programs in developing high-quality early intervention and preschool special education service systems, increasing local implementation of evidence-based practices, and enhancing outcomes for young children with disabilities and their families.

Georgia's Pre-K: Evaluation study of quality rated language and literacy endorsement

In support of efforts related to Georgia’s Quality Rated Language and Literacy Endorsement (QRLLE), we will collect information on the degree to which the Endorsement helps programs to improve their language and literacy practices, and information to advise next steps in the development and rollout of the Endorsement. This study will involve data collection, analyses, and reporting on the QRLLE related to practices observed during the upcoming school year (2023-24). The study will take place during the 2023-2024 school year and will be divided into three phases: (1) August 2023-September 2023: Preparation of data collection measures, IRB application, data collector hiring, observation refresher training, recruitment and scheduling classroom observations (2) October 2023-December 2023: classroom observations and data cleaning, and (3) January 2023-June 30, 2024: prepare report to summarize quality data and describe QRLLE programs and alignment with the LITTLE Program, convene a national expert panel on language and literacy endorsements, and summarize information gathered about QRLLE programs, endorsements nationally, and recommendations for next steps for the QRLLE.

Itticare Instructional Design for Duke Child and Family Studies

In a collaborative project with ITTI Care at Duke Center for Child & Family Policy, Wendy Morgan will work to integrate trauma-informed care practices within infant-toddler child care settings by evaluating existing training materials and suggesting revisions as necessary and designing comprehensive instructional strategy and training curricula for both coach-the-coach and direct-to-provider professional development efforts.

Meck Pre-K Program Evaluation

This project intends to conduct an independent, unbiased evaluation of the MECK Pre-K program that will be longitudinal in scope, tracking cohorts of MECK Pre-K students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools through 5th grade. Given the longitudinal nature of the evaluation and the need to track multiple cohorts, it is expected that this project will span 10 years. The focus of that evaluation will cover three key areas: program characteristics; program implementation and quality; and student outcomes.

National Evaluation Partner for the Educare Learning Network Implementation Study

This project consists of planning and implementing an evaluation of The Educare Learning Network, a consortium of programs nationwide providing high quality learning environments for at-risk children from birth to 5 years. The evaluation will document the features of Educare and how implementation of the model contributes to program quality and links to child and family outcomes.

Partnership to Build Teacher Capacity to Promote Language Learning in Infants and Toddlers with and at Risk for Disabilities

This project brings together six Educare Early Learning Network schools and collaborating local evaluation partners (LEPs), UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the University of Kansas in partnership to demonstrate the efficacy of implementing PC TALK, an early language intervention, to support the language learning of infants and young children with and at risk for disabilities. Designed to build the capacity of early educators and parents to promote communication opportunities and the development of infants and young children, the Promoting Communication Strategies will be embedded into randomly selected Educare classrooms across participating schools.

PDG Family Child Care Home Pilot Compensation Grant Follow-Up Evaluation Study

North Carolina has an ongoing commitment to families having a mixed delivery early care and learning system including equitable access to Family Child Care Home providers. North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) started a pilot study in August of 2023 with Preschool Development Grant funds to determine if program quality would increase if Family Child Care Home providers were paid a higher reimbursement rate that was closer to the cost of care. Building on the work of the previous pilot, FPG will continue to evaluate the impact of increased reimbursement rates on quality and provider compensation and benefits.

Scaling Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI) to Serve Students Impacted by COVID-19: High-Dosage Digital Implementation of an Effective Reading Intervention

This project will train school staff who support students using pull-out reading instruction and intervention (e.g., “educators” such as reading specialists, paraeducators, instructional facilitators, tutors) to use Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention) with two adaptations: 1) a digital version of the traditionally “paper and pencil” intervention (“TRI app”) in a 2) high dosage model whereby educators provide daily reading support to multiple K-3 students not yet reading on grade level.

STEMIE 2.0

This project's purpose is to expand the knowledge on the practices and supports necessary to improve access and participation within STEM learning opportunities for young children with disabilities and intersecting identities.

Supporting Change and Reform in Preservice Teaching in North Carolina (SCRIPT-NC)

Early childhood educators (ECE) work with young children with disabilities as well as children from diverse backgrounds to support learning and development. It is critical for ECEs to be adequately prepared to serve children who are linguistically, culturally, and ability-diverse. The purpose of this project is to work with early childhood community college programs in North Carolina to enhance and redesign courses to better prepare ECEs to work with children with disabilities and children from diverse backgrounds.

Understanding Mental and Behavioral Health in Head Start

The purpose of this project, in partnership with Mathematica-MPR, is to understand the landscape of program structures and supports for mental and behavioral health in Early Head Start/Head Start for children, families, and staff. To accomplish this, efforts will include engagement with experts; conceptual model development; study design and measurement development; data collection and analysis; dissemination of findings; and archiving data.

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

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