Research Emphases:
Early Childhood Development, Care, and Education
Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Development in Young Children
Dr. Jonathan Tudge - I'm interested in the links between 3-year-olds' typically occurring everyday activities and their teachers’ perceptions of competence once they enter school. We observe the children over the equivalent of one day in their lives, observing wherever they are situated, in home, child-care center, with grandparents, friends, shopping, etc., focusing on the activities in which they are involved, their partners, and their roles. We then follow the children for the next few years, through their first years in formal schooling, collecting data on their performance from their teachers and parents. In Greensboro we have equal numbers of Black and White families, half from working-class backgrounds and half from middle-class backgrounds, and evenly divided by child's gender. Various papers on this general theme can be found at my “papers” link.
Dr. Stephanie Coard conducts rigorous basic research that raises awareness and sensitivity to how socio-cultural issues impact developmental, educational and mental processes and outcomes for African American youth. Her understanding of socio-cultural factors as they relate to the etiology, treatment and prevention of child mental health problems and promotion of child wellbeing have informed her work on a number of federally funded studies.
Dr. Susan Calkins, Dr. Marion O’Brien & Dr.Esther Leerkes :We are involved in a collaborative research project (School Transitions and Academic Readiness,( funded by NICHD) in which we are examining the extent to which children’s emotional and cognitive development during the preschool period are related to one another and jointly influence children’s social and academic adjustment over the transition to kindergarten. We focus on the development of children’s emotion understanding, emotion control/regulation, cognitive understanding (e.g., theory of mind), and cognitive control (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control) along with relevant parenting and contextual factors. We collect a mix of observational, physiological and parent report data.
Dr. Marion O’Brien is interested in the interrelations between social, emotional, and cognitive domains as they develop throughout the early years. In a collaborative project with Dr. Susan Calkins and Dr. Esther Leerkes , the STAR Project is following children through the preschool years and into school, working to examine the ways in which emotional and cognitive competencies intersect and affect school adjustment, learning engagement, and academic achievement.
Early Childhood Care and Education
Dr. Marion O’Brien: I am interested in policies regarding child care and employment and their influence on family stress and parenting. I am one of the investigators of a national study of child care and children’s development, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care . This project was begun in 1991 as a study of the potential effects of out-of-home infant child care on children’s development and the family. The study continued to follow more than 1,000 children and families for 15 years. I am particularly interested in quality of care for infants and toddlers and have published two books on this topic: Inclusive Care for Infants and Toddlers and Quick Quality Check for Infant Toddler Care.