Margaret Burchinal | |
---|---|
Born | Columbus, Ohio | June 16, 1951
Occupation | Quantitative psychologist |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Iowa State University; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill |
Margaret R. Burchinal (born June 16,1951,in Columbus,Ohio) [1] is a quantitative psychologist and statistician known for her research on child care. [2] She is senior research scientist and director of the Data Management and Analysis Center of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Burchinal was lead editor of the Society for Research in Child Development monograph Quality Thresholds,Features,and Dosage in Early Care and Education:Secondary Data Analyses of Child Outcomes [3] and co-editor of the monograph Best Practices in Quantitative Methods for Developmentalists. [4]
Burchinal graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in psychology from Iowa State University in 1976. [5] She subsequently attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNCH),in which she graduated with a master's degree in special education in 1978. [5] Her master's thesis was titled The Contingent Relationship of Mother and Infant Behaviors in Dyadic Interactions.
Burchinal obtained her PhD in quantitative psychology at UNCH in 1986. Her dissertation,titled Methods for Estimating Individual Developmental Functions [5] was conducted under the supervision of Mark Appelbaum. [6] This study developed growth curve statistical models to estimate individual differences in speech development in longitudinal research designs. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of North Carolina,Burchinal was professor of education at the University of California,Irvine. [5] Her research has been supported through grants and awards from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Mathematica Policy Research Inc. [7]
Burchinal's research program has investigated the impact of high quality of childhood education on children's language and cognitive development. [8] She served as an investigator on the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project,a controlled experiment that established the benefits of early childhood education for children growing up in poverty. [9] This study enrolled over 100 predominantly African-American children born to low income families between 1972 and 1977. Infants were randomly assigned an early education group,which received an educational intervention in a childcare setting up to age five years,or to a control group. The educational intervention used games to encourage social,emotional,and cognitive areas of development with an emphasis on language skills. Follow up studies on the children's progress at ages 12,15,21,and 30 years indicated long lasting benefits of early childhood education. [10] [11]
Burchinal has collaborated with NICHD Early Child Care Research Network on studies of the long-term effects of early child care on children's functioning from ages 4 to 12 years old. [12] This study determined that higher quality child care from infancy to school entry was associated with higher vocabulary scores through age 12. Additionally,they found that greater exposure to center-based child care was associated with increased rates of teacher-reported externalizing behavior. Another study using this data set focused on the Black-White achievement gap observed among low income children in the United States,and found group differences to be largely explained by family,child care,and school experiences. [13]
Burchinal and her colleagues have studied the impact of teachers' relationships with their students and the role of instructional scaffolding in supporting children's learning and development. [14] Their research has shown how high quality relationships between preschool teachers and their students have beneficial effects on the children's academic and social skills.
Early childhood education (ECE), also known as nursery education, is a branch of education theory that relates to the teaching of children from birth up to the age of eight. Traditionally, this is up to the equivalent of third grade. ECE is described as an important period in child development.
Pre-kindergarten is a voluntary classroom-based preschool program for children below the age of five in the United States, Canada, Turkey and Greece. It may be delivered through a preschool or within a reception year in elementary school. Pre-kindergartens play an important role in early childhood education. They have existed in the US since 1922, normally run by private organizations. The U.S. Head Start program, the country's first federally funded pre-kindergarten program, was founded in 1967. This attempts to prepare children to succeed in school.
Universal preschool is an international movement supporting the use of public funding to provide preschool education to all families. This movement is focused on promoting a global, rather than local, preschool program. The goal is to provide equity across all socioeconomic backgrounds, enabling children to improve their academic and social skills before they attend kindergarten. Universal preschool, funded by the public, would allow more families to send their children to preschool.
The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a controlled experiment that was conducted in 1972 in North Carolina, United States, by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute to study the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children to enhance school readiness. It has been found that in their earliest school years, poor children lag behind others, suggesting they were ill-prepared for schooling. The Abecedarian project was inspired by the fact that few other early childhood programs could provide a sufficiently well-controlled environment to determine the effectiveness of early childhood training.
Compensatory education offers supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational achievement succeed.
The differential susceptibility theory proposed by Jay Belsky is another interpretation of psychological findings that are usually discussed according to the diathesis-stress model. Both models suggest that people's development and emotional affect are differentially affected by experiences or qualities of the environment. Where the Diathesis-stress model suggests a group that is sensitive to negative environments only, the differential susceptibility hypothesis suggests a group that is sensitive to both negative and positive environments. A third model, the vantage-sensitivity model, suggests a group that is sensitive to positive environments only. All three models may be considered complementary, and have been combined into a general environmental sensitivity framework.
Maternal sensitivity is a mother's ability to perceive and infer the meaning behind her infant's behavioural signals, and to respond to them promptly and appropriately. Maternal sensitivity affects child development at all stages through life, from infancy, all the way to adulthood. In general, more sensitive mothers have healthier, more socially and cognitively developed children than those who are not as sensitive. Also, maternal sensitivity has been found to affect the person psychologically even as an adult. Adults who experienced high maternal sensitivity during their childhood were found to be more secure than those who experienced less sensitive mothers. Once the adult becomes a parent themselves, their own understanding of maternal sensitivity will affect their own children's development. Some research suggests that adult mothers display more maternal sensitivity than adolescent mothers who may in turn have children with a lower IQ and reading level than children of adult mothers.
K. Alison Clarke-Stewart was a developmental psychologist and expert on children's social development. She is well known for her work on the effects of child care on children's development, and for her research on children's suggestibility. She has written over 100 articles for scholarly journals and co-authored several leading textbooks in the field.
Early childhood development is the period of rapid physical, psychological and social growth and change that begins before birth and extends into early childhood. While early childhood is not well defined, one source asserts that the early years begin in utero and last until 3 years of age.
Kenneth Dodge is the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also the founding and past director of the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy and founder of Family Connects International.
Aletha C. Huston is an American developmental psychologist and professor known for her research on the effects of poverty on children, on how child care and income support policies impact children's development, and for ground-breaking research on the impact of television and media usage on child development. Huston is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor Emeritus in Child Development at the University of Texas at Austin.
Stephanie M. Carlson is an American developmental psychologist whose research has contributed to scientific understanding of the development of children's executive function skills, including psychometrics and the key roles of imagination and distancing. Carlson is Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, and co-founder of Reflection Sciences, Inc.
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Nancy Eisenberg is an American psychologist and professor at Arizona State University. She was the President of the Western Psychological Association in 2014-2015 and the Division 7 president of the American Psychological Association in 2010-2012. Her research focuses on areas of emotional and social development of children. She is also in charge of a research lab at Arizona State University where undergraduate researchers help in longitudinal studies of social and emotional development in children and young adolescents.
Laura M. Justice is a language scientist and expert on interventions to promote children's literacy. She is the EHE Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at Ohio State University, where she also serves as the Executive Director of the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning.
Adam Winsler is a developmental psychologist known for his research on early child development, private speech, and benefits of arts education. Winsler is Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University.
Natasha J. Cabrera is a Canadian developmental psychologist known for her research on children's cognitive and social development, focusing primarily on fathers' involvement and influence on child development, ethnic and cultural variations in parenting behaviors, and factors associated with developmental risk. She holds the position of Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methods at the University of Maryland, College of Education, where she is Director of the Family Involvement Laboratory and affiliated with the Maryland Population Research Center. Cabrera also holds the position of Secretary on the Governing Council of the Society for the Research on Child Development and has served as Associate Editor of Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Child Development. Her research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Education Week, Time, and The Atlantic.
Deborah Lowe Vandell is a developmental psychologist and an expert on the impact of early child care on children's developmental trajectories and the benefits of children's participation in afterschool programs and other organized activities. She is the Founding Dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Education and Chancellor Professor of Education and Psychology.
Cassandra Cybele Raver is an American developmental psychologist currently serving as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. She previously served as Deputy Provost at New York University and Professor of Applied Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU.
The Survey of Teachers in Pre-Primary Education (STEPP) is the first international survey for low-and-middle-income countries designed to collect information that is known to affect the quality of pre-primary education from pre-primary teachers and centre heads. The collected information concerns training and professional development, pedagogical and professional practices, working conditions and job satisfaction, and characteristics of pre-primary personnel and the settings in which they work.
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