CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HOME, PRESCHOOL, AND SCHOOL FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
Marion O'Brien: As one of the investigators for the NICHD Study of Early Child Care & Youth Development, I have worked extensively on the interconnections among the child-rearing contexts of home and family, child care, and school, and the influence of each of these contexts on children's cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes.
Jonathan Tudge : What goes on in the home clearly has a large impact on what happens in both preschool and school. However, most of the research on home-school linkages examines this issue from the perspective of the school. My research is aimed at understanding the links among (a) parents' values and beliefs about raising children, (b) the types of everyday activities that children of preschool age are involved in with their typical social partners, and (c) how the children's teachers and parents view them, academically, socially, and behaviorally, once they go to school. We observe the children's activities, how they get involved in them, their partners, and roles, when the children are three years of age. We observe for the equivalent of one complete day in their lives (20 hours of observation on each child, spread over the course of a week), wherever the children happen to be (at home, in a child care center if they go to one, with grandparents, shopping, etc.). The children's parents are also interviewed at this time. Then, once the children have entered school, we collect more information from both the teachers and the parents, about how they're doing. Most importantly, we have been able to link perceptions of the children's school performance to the types of activities in which they've been involved several years earlier.