- FPG experts will be presenting at meetings around the world. Visit the FPG website for a complete list of upcoming presentations.
- Visit the FPG websitefor the latest news on FPG projects.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded FPG a $12.8 million grant to continue the largest study to date of how rural life affects child development.
Launched five years ago, the Family Life Project has been following families living in two of the four major geographical areas of high child rural poverty - the African-American South and Appalachia. Researchers have followed 1,292 children from birth in three counties in Eastern North Carolina and three counties in Central Pennsylvania. This second phase of the project will follow these children as they enter school.
"Even though more than half of all poor children live in rural areas, most of the research about children living in poverty is based on studies of urban children. Therefore, policies designed to help children living in poverty may not best meet the needs of those living in rural areas," said Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the study's principal investigator and FPG fellow. "Our findings will have important implications for local and national policies and the services most needed by rural families."
Dr. Vernon-Feagans discussed the project on WUNC’s the State of Things on January 22, 2008.
Listen to the program.
Download the press release.
Preschoolers can benefit when early childhood programs use a simple and inexpensive mental health screening process, ABLE, that flags emergent socio-emotional problems that can affect future school success, according to research by FPG.
According to Dr. Oscar Barbarin, FPG fellow and the author of the paper in the American Journal of Orthopsyhiatry, because children with behavioral and emotional problems struggle to succeed in school, public preschool programs with a focus on school readiness are beginning to recognize the significance of children’s socio-emotional difficulties. For example, Head Start has standards mandating mental health assessment and intervention for socio-emotional problems.
“The challenge programs face is in finding an assessment tool that can easily and quickly be given by early childhood educators; that provides accurate, easily interpreted, and useful results; and that holds up under scientific scrutiny,” said Barbarin, who is also the Preyer Distinguished Professor of Strengthening Families at UNC’s School of Social Work. “ABLE appears to do that and can be used as a universal screening instrument to help allocate limited mental health resources.”
ABLE is a system for screening pre-kindergarten children for problems of adjustment by surveying parents and teachers. It is presented in two levels. The first asks about concerns parents or teachers have related to attention, behavior, language and emotions. The second level is used only if a serious concern is identified. ABLE is not a diagnostic tool; it is a screening tool that identifies problems that could be a precursor to a more serious disorder.
Download a summary of the study.
Download the press release.
Recent articles by FPG researchers in several journals explore different facets of communication in boys with FXS, boys with FXS and autism, boys with Down syndrome, and boys developing typically.
The findings will allow professionals to focus interventions efforts to
best help children communicate effectively.
Download a summary of the findings.
Virginia Buysse and Ellen Peisner-Feinberg participated in a Capitol Hill briefing discussing the benefits of Recognition and Response, an early intervention system to identify signs of learning difficulties in Pre-K children. The briefing was sponsored by the National Center for Learning Disabilities and took place on January 30, 2008.
Recognition and Response is a research-based approach to helping teachers and parents respond to signs of learning difficulty in young children as early as ages three or four, before they experience school failure.
As early as age three, some young children exhibit problems in areas such as language development, phonological awareness, perceptual-motor abilities, and attention. While some of these concerns resolve themselves over time, some may be precursors of learning disabilities. Formal identification of learning disabilities generally does not occur until second or third grade. However, addressing signs of learning difficulties in the pre-k years has the potential to mitigate or prevent later learning problems in school.
Download a PowerPoint from the Briefing.
FPG has received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to address the national need to improve the skills of those working with young children with disabilities and their families. The new Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge will be a showcase for providing a new approach to professional development that emphasizes exchange and collaboration via online resources shaped by the needs of those in the field.
Researchers from FPG and its partners at the University of Kentucky and the University of Kansas will work with the early childhood community to create a series of web-based resources that focus on and respond to challenges faced each day in the field.
This effort will create guidelines to support the creation of professional development materials that are standards-based, strongly rooted in an evidence-based practice framework, and easily adaptable to the needs of multiple audiences and contexts, with strong evaluation components linked to policies, resources, and practices.
Download the press release.
Maggie Connolly was named 2007 Employee of the Year by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Tony Waldrop. Connolly is the director of the child care program at FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) at UNC, a position she has held for the past four years.
The Employee of the Year Award recognizes the outstanding accomplishments of an employee in the Research and Economic Development division. Connolly will receive a monetary award of $500 and a framed certificate.
In his nomination letter, FPG Director Samuel Odom emphasized, “Maggie is a remarkable supervisor, advisor, teacher and colleague.The work she does is a major contributor to FPG’s success in early childhood research, demonstration, and professional development.”
A new podcast discusses findings from a study published in Early Education and Development, which shows that English-only policies may not help children with English proficiency, and may actually harm children in other ways. Researchers showed that Spanish-speaking children with teachers who spoke some Spanish in the classroom were rated by their teachers as having better social skills and closer relationships with their teachers than children with teachers who did not speak Spanish in the classroom.
Download the mp3 file.
Download a research summary.