african american male teacher with eight young students from diverse backgrounds standing outside school

Factors such as socioeconomic status, geographic location, and disability, can lead to significant gaps in learning outcomes. To address this, research around disparities in education and learning must occur. A primary mission of FPG is to generate knowledge to establish programs that produce positive outcomes for children and their families, and use that knowledge to prepare caregivers and teachers to provide the best possible learning environments for promoting development and success. As such, FPG is dedicated to investigating and addressing disparities in education and learning and establishing programs to positively impact academic achievement. The research, evaluation, and interventions developed within FPG serve learners and teachers throughout our state, across the country, and around the world.

Featured Publication

A recent study by FPG Faculty Fellow Helen Rose Miesner, PhD, highlights how contextual factors inform elementary principals’ engagement with anti-LGBTQ+ policy priorities and holds implications for how these policies may in turn impact school community members across varied contexts. Grounded in policy enactment theory, this work draws on interviews from a larger comparative case study to understand how elementary principals in sociopolitically distinct districts enacted North Carolina’s 2023 Senate Bill 49 in their schools.

Featured Media Coverage

FPG Equity Research Action Coalition Founding Director Iheoma Iruka's recent EdNC Perspective explores North Carolina's early childhood system and discusses the need to move beyond measuring its impact by availability and average outcomes, asking whether the system has repaired inequities in access, quality, experience, and opportunity for children, families, and communities who have been historically underserved.

Current Projects

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EMERGE: Early Markers of Expressive and Receptive Language Growth in Ethnically Diverse Autistic Toddlers
Spoken language is predictive of many positive life outcomes, such as employment, social interaction, play skills and more. But, researchers still don’t know why some children talk and others don’t, especially as it relates to historically marginalized and minoritized populations. A new study, EMERGE: Early Markers of Expressive and Receptive Language Growth in Ethnically Diverse Autistic Toddlers, seeks to change that.
Equity Research Action Coalition
Exploring legal status and race as determinants of Black immigrant maternal health
In collaboration with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and African Family Health Organization, community-based organizations that engage and educate African American and Black immigrant communities, we will conduct an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research to identify barriers and facilitators to positive birth outcomes for Black mothers with a focus on attention to health care access through focus groups and interviews and conduct causal inference analyses using extant data (i.e., Vital Statistics) to examine the effect of 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act on the birthing outcomes of Black immigrants.
Inclusive PreK STEM Playgroups: Empowering our Youngest Learners and their Caregivers for Confidence and Competence in STEM Learning
This project is grounded in a science education partnership between Kidzu Children’s Museum and FPG’s STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education Center (STEMIE). The project will include sharing resources and spaces to develop and implement playgroups for pre-K children with a variety of abilities and their caregivers with specific STEM related goals and activities through the sequence of playgroups.
Starting Them off on the Right Path: Utilizing Home Visiting to Address Race-based Trauma and Support Children's Racial Identity Formation
The purpose of this project is to gather perspectives from current Parents As Teachers families and parent educators. This is a developmental evaluation to understand how Parents as Teachers (PAT) could address race-based trauma and stressors and support the positive racial identity formation for young children.