FPG Post-Doctoral Fellows

Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University, 2006

Mentors: Peg Burchinal and Liz Pungello

Research Experience and Interests:
Aryn’s research is grounded in developmental and ecological approaches to the study of children’s and adolescents’ school experiences and a cademic achievement. She is particularly interested in gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic variations in school engagement and academic achievement, with attention to the role that families play in parenting and socialization. As a graduate student, she focused on these issues during adolescence given the increased importance placed on academic achievement and declines in academic achievement and motivation during this developmental period. In her postdoctoral work, she has extended this line of inquiry to early childhood. It is clear that early experiences are important for successful transition to school and lay a foundation for later achievement. In the future she will continue in this area of research, using longitudinal models of process and change to examine how school experiences and cognitive skills in early childhood are related to academic achievement and school engagement through the elementary schools years, into adolescence.

Work as a Post Doctoral Fellow at FPG:
Aryn has worked on a study with Drs. Burchinal and Bryant comparing the effects of universal versus targeted pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs in terms of classroom quality and gains in children’s early cognitive development. Concerns about school readiness especially among children from low-income families, have resulted in massive funding of state pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs. Pre-K programs differ in whether they are universal (i.e., available to all children) or targeted (i.e., offered only to children with specific risk factors) but empirical evidence on differences in outcomes among the program types is lacking. Using data from an 11-state Pre-K evaluation study, Aryn’s analysis provided information that may be useful to policy-makers as they make decisions related to public Pre-K. This manuscript is currently under review. 

Working with Dr. Burchinal, she has also used data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD), to examine whether school engagement mediated the effects of classroom characteristics on academic achievement during early adolescence and whether this pattern was the same for youth who were struggling in school versus those who were not. Findings from this study were presented at the 2007 Institute of Education Sciences research conference in Washington D.C. and a manuscript is in preparation. In another research project also using data from NICHD SECCYD, Aryn and Dr. Burchinal are examining the effects of school readiness on academic achievement trajectories through 5th grade.

Aryn has continued to develop her analytical skills through out the postdoctoral training. Working with other colleagues at FPG, she co-authored and served as the statistician on a manuscript that used multilevel modeling (MLM) to examine growth trajectories in young children’s language development. These analyses also determined how these patterns varied as a function of race, socioeconomic status, and parenting in a sample of European and African American families of low and high income. The manuscript is currently under review.

Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from University of Miami, FL in 2005.

Mentors: Donna Bryant, Peg Burchinal, Oscar Barbarin, and Elizabeth Pungello

Research Interests:
Iheoma’s research interests center around school readiness, academic and social success in low-income and minority children; and the role of the family and preschool environment in this process. As a graduate student at the University of Miami (UM), Iheoma was involved in the development of a direct assessment to measure preschooler’s approaches to learning, a school readiness domain. Her thesis and dissertation work at UM focused on parental processes (i. e., parent efficacy and involvement) and its effect on Head Start children’s school readiness. As a post doctoral fellow at FPG, Iheoma has extended this line of research by examining additional parenting processes, such as parental attitudes, parent-child interactions, and the home environment on children’s school readiness and academic and social competence.
Work as a Post Doctoral Fellow at FPG:
Iheoma has primarily focused on preparing manuscripts through the secondary analyses of existing, longitudinal datasets, including NICHD Study of Early Child Care, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Study, and the Durham Child Health and Development Study. She has had the opportunities to collaborate with multiple researchers at FPG and faculty throughout the UNC community.

She is also actively involved in the research, planning, implementation, and analysis of full-scale intervention studies. The first study, a Child Care Bureau-funded project, is examining the effectiveness of a professional development consultation model to enhance the early childhood environment of preschool centers and family child care provider homes in five states using randomization. Iheoma’s roles in this project have included participation in committee meetings, documentation of measures, assisting in preparation of manuscript, and analyst particularly around issues regarding impact of home-school partnership on young children’s academic readiness and socioemotional development. The second study, a Kellogg-funded intervention based on a multi-systemic approach, focuses on improving the academic and socioemotional development of young boys of color in four school districts across the United States. Iheoma’s primary role in this study has been to develop a parent training manual to enhance parents’ engagement with their children’s language, math, and behavior, as well as provide concrete strategies to parents on ways to communicate and collaborate with their children’s teachers and school staff. Since these studies are at different points, they have provided Iheoma with skills and knowledge regarding large scale studies in the “real world.”